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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455978">Andy's Story</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite'>pallasite</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Behind the Gloves (condensed) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Babylon 5, Babylon 5 &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Backstory, Boarding School, Bullying, Canon Compliant, Culture Shock, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Psi Corps, Rogue Telepaths, Sacrifice, Teenagers, Telepath War, Worldbuilding, telepaths</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:01:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455978</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy is a young telepath at school during the time of the Telepath War. This is his story.</p><p>This work is a selection from the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/677654">Behind the Gloves</a> project, with all the chapters of this work together in one place.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Family Relationships, Friendship - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Behind the Gloves (condensed) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687384</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>September 2262. Somewhere in the Greater Chicago suburbia.</p><p>             Andy Mora tried to stop, but it kept happening – he’d find himself humming along to the songs in other people’s heads, or chiming in on climatic moments of stories he hadn’t yet heard.  Or he’d laugh at jokes before they were finished, turn around before people called his name, answer questions before he was asked.</p><p>            Leo was the first to finally say something. “You know, Andy, that’s really freaky.”</p><p>            “You were just going to say it anyway, Leo.”</p><p>            “So? It’s not right! Stop it!”</p><p>            When he raised his hand to answer the question his teacher was about to ask, he could feel everyone staring at him.</p><p>            “Andy,” she said, "you couldn’t possibly know what I’m about to say. I haven’t asked the question yet.”</p><p>            So he put his hand down and tried to laugh it off.</p><p>            Yet it seemed that the second he stopped concentrating, his mind was acting up again. Confused, scared, he didn’t know how to stop doing it – it was all reflexive, automatic, like reading a piece of paper shoved under his nose. He didn’t even know when he was saying something “wrong” until he’d already said it.</p><p>            He wanted it all to stop, but it didn’t. It just got worse.</p><p>            “Watch where you’re going, sicko!” shouted Patrick as he stuck his foot out in front of Andy and tripped him in the corridor. With blond hair in a military buzz cut and a perpetual sneer on his round face, Patrick looked every bit as mean as he acted. “You’re a freak, Mora!”</p><p>            Andy’s friends laughed as he stood up. Only Misha had mixed feelings, and he looked away, pretending that nothing was happening.</p><p>            “Keep it up, Mora,” Patrick taunted, hauling his light brown satchel up onto his shoulder. “The Psi Corps will come for you and you’ll never see your family again. They’re coming for you.”</p><p>            Misha spoke up. “Shut up Patrick. Andy’s just lucky sometimes. He’s no more of a telepath than you are. We’ve all been tested. Leave him alone.”</p><p>            But under the constant taunting of Patrick and his buddies, Andy’s friends began to drift away. One day, Andy was sitting in the stands and studying math while waiting for a track meet to start. He laughed to himself, but everyone ignored him.</p><p>            Geoff closed his book a few moments later to chat with Victor, then looked back to it.</p><p>            “Oh, crap,” Geoff mumbled to himself, “my bookmark fell out. Where was I?”</p><p>            Andy looked up from his homework and turned around in the bleachers. “You’re at the part where Tom shows up at his own funeral, and the preacher’s like, ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow – SING! – and put your hearts in it!’ and everybody starts singing. That’s a really funny scene.”</p><p>            Geoff and everyone else in earshot looked at Andy with shock and horror.</p><p>            “What?” Andy asked, suddenly embarrassed.</p><p>            “You’re not in my English class. And you’ve never even read <span class="u">Tom Sawyer</span>.”</p><p>            “So?”</p><p>            “So?!”</p><p>            “You asked me where you were in the book, Geoff! You asked me! It’s not my fault if you read something funny.”</p><p>            “I wasn’t asking you! I was talking to myself!”</p><p>            “Andy’s a freak,” said Mike.</p><p>            “I don’t want you sitting next to me anymore,” Geoff said, and stood and walked further down the stands.</p><p>            “Stay out of people’s heads, Andy,” Victor said, scared. “That’s not right.”</p><p>            “I didn’t do anything! I swear!” Andy got up and took a couple steps towards Geoff.</p><p>            “Stay away from me,” Geoff said from down the bleachers. “Just stay away from me.”</p><p>            From then on, the relationship between Andy and his friends was different. He noticed Geoff and Mike turn and walk the other way whenever he approached. He tried to sit with them at lunch, but there was always some excuse.</p><p>            “Sorry Andy, we’re holding this seat for Misha.”</p><p><em>            No you’re not,</em> Andy thought. He knew it was a lie.</p><p>            He ate his lunch alone, in the back of the cafeteria. <em>It’ll pass</em>, he kept telling himself. <em>They’ll get over it… we’ve all been friends forever, since cub scouts. They’re just afraid of Patrick.</em></p><p>            But the next day, his friends made sure to pick a table with just enough chairs for them, and no room for him at all.</p><p>*****</p><p>            That he might be telepathic raised more questions than answers. No telepaths lived in town. He’d never even seen one in person, other than the testers who had showed up to test students in kindergarten and again at the start of middle school.<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> Telepathy testing had been mandatory in schools for about a century, but Andy didn’t have a clear idea what happened to kids if they tested positive.</p><p>            He couldn’t really be a telepath, he figured – there were no telepaths in his family, and didn’t you have to be born that way, or have some gene?<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> Hadn’t he already been tested for it? The tests had come back as expected – normal. Everyone else’s always had, too.</p><p>            He couldn’t be a telepath.</p><p>            History class had barely mentioned telepaths. Every timeline had the obligatory dates – April 12, 2156, Psi Corps founded<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> – but there wasn’t much more offered than that. No telepaths who had lived in the past hundred years were even named. The only telepath in Andy’s entire text was William Karges, a bodyguard to then-President Robinson, who had been fatally shot by an assassin while pulling her to safety,<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> and whose death had inspired her to pass equal opportunity laws<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> to create the Corps, to keep telepaths safe.<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a></p><p>            “Why do telepaths go to separate schools?” Andy had asked his history teacher, after class one day.</p><p>            “Why do you ask?”</p><p>            He shrugged. “Just curious. Our class reader doesn’t say a lot.”</p><p>            “Isn’t it obvious?” the teacher replied coldly. “It’s because they cheat.”</p><p>            Andy didn’t understand. Normals cheated, too, didn’t they? And kids who were caught cheating weren’t sent to separate schools, they were just given bad grades, and made to stay after school.       </p><p>            Since that day on the bleachers, Andy had developed more control. It wasn’t difficult now to know what others were reading and writing. Seeing what others were writing on their exams was as easy as looking up at the board.</p><p><em>            What if I’m really a telepath, and the teachers accuse me of cheating?</em> he wondered nervously. <em>Will I be kicked out of school?</em></p><p>            Once known, an answer couldn’t be unknown. If he so much as paid attention in the wrong way, at the wrong time, to the wrong thing…</p><p>            No no no, that would be bad. Really bad.</p><p>            The problem was that trying <span class="u">not</span> to pay attention to something only made him pay <span class="u">more</span> attention to it.</p><p>            With horror, Andy realized he could be accused of cheating even if his answers were wrong, so long as they looked too much like another classmate’s. Terrified, he started intentionally writing nonsense on his tests or leaving questions blank. He couldn’t write anything at all without risking punishment, both for himself and for his classmates. Failing, it seemed, was the only safe thing to do.</p><p>            His coach pulled him aside one day. “Andy, you had good grades all last year, and now your teachers have told me you’ve started getting D’s. Is everything all right at home?”</p><p>            He shrugged, pretending he didn’t care.</p><p>            “Your guidance counselor is worried about you. So am I. This isn’t like you.”</p><p>            Another shrug.</p><p>            His parents, too, were concerned, but he only told them he didn’t know why he was doing badly in school. His math teacher asked him to come for extra help twice a week, and Andy obediently did so, even though he already knew the material she was teaching.</p><p>            He sat in class every day and watched the autumn leaves stirring in the breeze, tuning out the teacher and the other students. He felt like one of those leaves, blown off the tree, lost. He didn’t know anyone who could do what he could do, and his friends drifted further and further away.</p><p>
  <em>            If I don’t say anything, maybe it will pass. Maybe this will go away and everything will be all right again.</em>
</p><p>            He hoped. He prayed.</p><p>            He decided to talk to his mom. Hypothetically, of course.</p><p>            Andy came downstairs from his room, butterflies in his stomach. The news played in the background as his mother made dinner.</p><p>            “Mom? Can I ask you something?”</p><p>            “The news is on now, honey, can it wait?”</p><p>            <em>“Authorities in New York City, Chicago and Boston report that graffiti from rogue telepath groups was discovered this morning in subway tunnels, in what appears to be a coordinated effort. Authorities shut down all three subway systems for several hours this morning as they searched for possible explosives, disrupting the commute for over a million workers.”</em></p><p>            The screen switched to a picture of a subway tunnel with two slogans spray-painted onto the stone walls, “Death to Psi Corps” and “Remember Byron.”<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a></p><p>
  <em>            “Psi Corps officials confirm that the slogan ‘Remember Byron’ refers to Byron Gordon,<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> the renegade Psi Cop turned rogue who set himself on fire last June,<a href="#_ftn9" id="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a> sparking the recent wave of unrest. This morning’s graffiti echoes similar slogans left on the walls of the main Psi Corps headquarters on Mars, which was bombed in June by rogue telepath terrorists,<a href="#_ftn10" id="_ftnref10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a> as well as at the sites of dozens of subsequent bombings and other attacks on Psi Corps facilities both on Earth and off-world.”<a href="#_ftn11" id="_ftnref11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a></em>
</p><p>            The scene switched to old footage, showing the blaze from the summer, lighting up the night sky with flames and sparks and great plumes of black smoke.</p><p>
  <em>             “Authorities throughout the Earth Alliance remain on high alert for more terrorist attacks. Psi Corps issued a statement this morning reminding the public that the safety of normals, as always, remains their highest concern, and that they take all threats very seriously. A thorough investigation is underway. The Corps urges anyone who has information on these threats to contact authorities. The public is urged to report suspicious behavior to law enforcement immediately. Your help can save lives.”</em>
</p><p>            The number for a tip-line appeared on the screen.</p><p>            “My God, what’s wrong with this world?” Andy’s mother was saying. “First President Clark,<a href="#_ftn12" id="_ftnref12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a> and now this? Rogue telepaths again? Has the world gone mad? We haven’t this much of a problem with rogue telepaths since my childhood. Can’t the Psi Corps keep its own people in line? For all our hard-earned tax dollars…”</p><p>            “<em>The recent unrest has also added fuel to the ages-old ‘telepath question’. Is there a solution? Is the Corps doing enough to protect the public? Speaking to us from Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts is Professor-“</em></p><p>            Andy nervously tossed an orange up and down as his mother prepared some vegetables for dinner.</p><p>            He felt her mind suddenly shift to Lucy.</p><p>            “Will you stop playing with that orange, Andy, and fill up Lucy’s bowl? We’ve moved some things around. The dog food should be out in the garage now.”</p><p>
  <em>            I knew what she was going to say. How did I know what she was going to say?</em>
</p><p>            He went into the garage and did as he was told, though it took him a while to find everything. When he returned, the news had switched to a different story, this time about the new Interstellar Alliance negotiations. Andy didn’t know what the commentators were talking about, other than it had something to do with the politics between humans and aliens. He cared only that the story wasn’t about telepaths.</p><p>
  <em>            “Interstellar News has also received confirmation on rumors that former Minbari Ambassador Delenn, wife of Interstellar Alliance President John Sheridan, is pregnant,<a href="#_ftn13" id="_ftnref13" name="_ftnref13">[13]</a> marking the first time a human and an alien have ever conceived. Medical experts remain baffled…”</em>
</p><p><em>            I’ll ask her during the ads,</em> he told himself. <em>Just hypothetically.</em></p><p>            Finally, the segment ended and a public service announcement came on.<a href="#_ftn14" id="_ftnref14" name="_ftnref14">[14]</a> A boy about Andy’s age approached his mother in the living room.</p><p>            He’d seen the ad before – it was a few years old.<a href="#_ftn15" id="_ftnref15" name="_ftnref15">[15]</a> But now the PSA took on an eerie familiarity to his own circumstances.</p><p>            “John?” the boy’s mother asked him. “Why aren't you outside playing with the other kids?”</p><p>            “They hate me,” he said sullenly.</p><p>            “Now, John…”</p><p>            “It’s true. I’m just… I’m different, Mom. I can feel what they think about me, and they know I can. And he just kept hitting me until I said I was the liar. I just don’t know what to do anymore.”</p><p>            “Don’t worry, Johnny,” his mother said.</p><p>            “We’ll take it from here-”</p><p>            A Psi Cop materialized in the boy’s living room, courtesy of special effects.</p><p>            “Look!” the boy exclaimed. “A Psi Cop!”</p><p>            “That’s right Johnny,” the Psi Cop said, his hair slicked back, his uniform neatly pressed. “There are a lot of other kids who feel just the same way you do. They’re confused and afraid, but they don’t have to be. The problem isn’t that other kids don’t like you. It’s that they don’t understand you. But we do.”</p><p>            Andy felt an uneasy feeling in his stomach, like he was suddenly floating weightless, unmoored from his old sense of balance, of grounding. He’d ignored similar ads all his life, even laughed at them sometimes, because they were never relevant to him back then. Besides, the ministry put out lots of messages for teens – don’t start forest fires, don’t take drugs, don’t drink and drive, and so on.</p><p>            But now Andy didn’t know what to think. He related – he knew his friends didn’t understand him, either. They called him a freak and told him what he could do “wasn’t right.”</p><p>            “You’re special,” the Psi Cop told the boy. “You’re a latent telepath about to come into full bloom.”</p><p>            “My Johnny?” asked the mother. “A telepath?”</p><p>            “Probably. But to be sure, take him down to the Psi Corps Testing Center first thing tomorrow.”</p><p>            “How do I find one?”</p><p>            “We’re everywhere, for your convenience. We have offices in some schools, and in children’s hospitals. We even have mobile testing centers that travel the country.”</p><p>            There certainly was no such office in Andy’s school, that he knew that much. Maybe in the big cities? He’d never seen a mobile testing center, either, though testers did come to his middle school every year. In kindergarten, they’d done the testing right after the school nurse had checked the children for head lice.</p><p>            “And if he qualifies, we’ll give him an education, a job, a purpose. And, we’ll pay all his bills for life!”</p><p>            In the next scene, the boy stood with the Psi Cop, in a smaller version of the same uniform with matching badge and gloves, his hair slicked back like that of his new role model. He looked happy.</p><p>            “John,” his mother said, “look at you, you’ve come so far. Look at you! We’re all so proud!”</p><p>            “And I’m proud to be a part of the Psi Corps,” the boy replied, beaming.</p><p>            “So remember,” the Psi Cop told the camera, “if you know someone who might be a telepath, or think you might be one yourself, help them get the help they need. Call the Corps. Call Government Information for more on a Psi Corps Center near you. This message is from the Ministry for Public Information, and your local Psi Corps Recruitment Office.”<a href="#_ftn16" id="_ftnref16" name="_ftnref16">[16]</a></p><p>            “Bah,” Andy’s mother said, rolling her eyes at the screen. “Now there’s one problem I’m glad we don’t have. Proud? How ridiculous. Who would be proud to have a child in Psi Corps?”</p><p>            Andy’s mouth went dry, and his knees suddenly felt like rubber. He held onto the marble countertop to keep from falling over.</p><p>            “What was it you wanted to talk about?” she asked as the next ad came on. “Is this about school?”</p><p>            “Never mind, it’s nothing,” he croaked. “Nothing important.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> The actual testing schedule is never specified in canon. Gregory Keyes, Dark Genesis, p. 59-60 shows compulsory telepath testing in elementary school (more than a century earlier, when such testing was new, and when they were registering anyone with the genetic marker rather than identifying manifested telepaths).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> See Dark Genesis, p. 46, 50 and 60 for “we can identify seventy percent of telepaths medically” (with genetic tests), leaving thirty percent who don’t carry the genetic marker. See Gregory Keyes, Deadly Relations, p. 44 (“Toward the end of his stay, the prison psychologist nevertheless had become convinced that Nielsson had psi abilities, but simply did not have the mitochondrial marker - not that unusual; after all, thirty percent of telepaths lacked it.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Canon is inconsistent about this date. <em>Illusion of Truth</em> gives the date in a news broadcast as having been April 12<sup>th</sup>, 2161, but Dark Genesis p. 119 clearly shows the Corps as being formed immediately after the Centauri landed, in 2156. (Additionally, since Crawford was assassinated shortly after the Centauri made contact, he could not have been having the conversation with Robinson depicted on p. 119 – in which she appoints Crawford director of the Corps – if the year were 2161 rather than the more obvious 2156.) This book uses April 12<sup>th</sup>, 2156 as the correct date.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 119, Deadly Relations, p. 10-11, Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 246-247</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Tim Dehass. “The Psi Corps and You!” /Babylon 5 #11/</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 10-11, Final Reckoning, p. 246-247. This is the story taught to children in school.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> <em>Wheel of Fire</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 251</p><p><a href="#_ftnref9" id="_ftn9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> <em>Phoenix Rising</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref10" id="_ftn10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> <em>Phoenix Rising</em> mentions the bombing of the "main Psi Corps headquarters," implying the attack took place in Geneva. But see Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 212-213, 241 (the first attack took place on Mars, and targeted Bester's office. At least sixty-four telepaths were killed in the attack.).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref11" id="_ftn11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> <em>Wheel of Fire</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref12" id="_ftn12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> <em>Endgame</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref13" id="_ftn13" name="_ftn13">[13]</a> <em>Wheel of Fire</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref14" id="_ftn14" name="_ftn14">[14]</a> This PSA plays in <em>And Now for a Word</em>. Although its content factually accurate, the PSA’s presentation in the show is nonetheless distorted. No PSA that is intended to build the public’s trust in an organization or policy would present an image that is scary and “sinister” – this is the show’s bias.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref15" id="_ftn15" name="_ftn15">[15]</a> <em>And Now for a Word</em> takes place in September 2259</p><p><a href="#_ftnref16" id="_ftn16" name="_ftn16">[16]</a> This public service announcement plays between the ads in the episode <em>And Now for a Word</em>. Most telepaths develop their abilities as teenagers. See Deadly Relations, p. 35-36 (“All telepaths are special, but you are the most special. The powers of most children do not bloom until they are eleven, twelve, older. Most of you manifested almost as you were born. Only five percent manifest before puberty. You are all rare.” See also <em>Legacies</em> (puberty can trigger the development of psi)).</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Andy performed worse and worse on the track.</p><p>            “You just don’t have the discipline,” his coach said. “You’re distracted. Is everything all right at home?”</p><p>            Andy nodded.</p><p>            “You eating right? Sleeping enough?”</p><p>            Nod.</p><p>            “Wanna talk about it?”</p><p>            Shrug.</p><p>            He thought about telling his coach the truth. Maybe Andy could trust him more than his mom.</p><p>            “What do you think about telepaths?” Andy asked his coach after practice, when no one was around.</p><p>            “Why do you ask?”</p><p>            “Oh, just ‘cuz they’ve been all over the news lately.” It seemed like the safest excuse.</p><p>            The coach laughed. “Oh, there’s no reason to worry, Andy. All that trouble is far away in the city. You won’t find any telepaths around here.”</p><p>            “Yeah, but what do you think of them?”</p><p>            The coach chewed on his gum for a moment, thinking. “I suppose they didn’t have any choice being born that way,” he said at last. “But if they’re going to live in society, they have to follow the rules, you know? That’s why we have the Psi Corps, to keep ‘em in line.” He chuckled. “But don’t worry, there are no telepaths around here, even the good kind.”</p><p>            Andy nodded and went to put his sneakers away in his locker.</p><p>            “It’s like… I suppose it’s like carrying a gun,” the coach continued. “I’ve got a license to carry it. Means I know how to be responsible, that I agree to follow the law. Telepaths got to be licensed, too. I don’t know much, just that the good ones mostly work for businesses in the city. And Psi Cops track the bad ones down so we don’t have to worry.”</p><p>            “…OK, thanks.”</p><p>            On his way home, Andy spotted four classmates smoking outside O’Neil’s convenience store. Patrick, the boy who’d tripped him, was among them.</p><p>            Andy froze, trying to decide if the group would let him pass, or if he should cross the street to give them a wide berth. Patrick was in a terrible mood, and Andy could feel it. It was enough for Andy to make up his mind. He had enough problems as it was, and he didn’t need one more.</p><p>            “Hey! Hey look, it’s the freak!” Patrick said, dropping his cigarette and crushing it with his heel. His friends looked up.</p><p>            Andy felt Patrick’s anger like a dagger of ice in his chest.</p><p>
  <em>            Oh my God, he wants to kill me. Something horrible happened at home and he’s looking for a scapegoat.</em>
</p><p>            Andy turned and ran.</p><p>            “Hey! Hey come back here, you little shit! I wanna show you something!”</p><p>            Andy ran past the shops on Main Street, zigzagging around the pedestrians, heading for the woods about half a mile off, hoping to lose them. If ever his track trophies mattered, it was now.</p><p>            Even without turning, he could hear – and feel – the four bullies in hot pursuit.</p><p>            “Hey! Hey, where do you think you’re going?!”</p><p>            Andy tried to take a shortcut through an alleyway, but never made it out the other side. Something hard hit Andy in the middle of his back, and he lost his balance and fell, hitting the duracrete. His chest hit the hard surface with a powerful thud, knocking the wind out of him, and for an instant he couldn’t breathe at all. He knew he had to run, but he couldn’t move. His palms were scraped and bloody.</p><p>            A light brown satchel lay next to him. Patrick’s bag. That kid had good aim.</p><p><em>            Come on Andy,</em> he told himself <em> Get up…</em></p><p>            He tried to stand, but it was too late. Rough hands grabbed him and flipped him over, and a punch connected painfully with his jaw.</p><p>            “Mora, you mindfucker! That’ll put you in your place!”</p><p>            Then another punch, and another. Then a kick to his ribs.</p><p>            Andy tried to curl into a ball. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t even have the air in his lungs to scream.</p><p>            “Freak! Monster! This’ll teach you not to go raping people’s brains out!”</p><p>            Even with his eyes closed, Andy could see the scene – two of them held him down and the third stood lookout. Patrick hit him again and again. Memories, sensations and hatred all bled together and ran.</p><p>            For a moment, Andy wasn’t sure which side of the attack he was on. He could feel nothing in his body over the barrage of blinding hatred, the images and sounds and smells of Patrick’s life jumbled together and slamming into Andy as hard as the other boy’s fists. Patrick was punching his father, trying to protect himself and his mother from the times his father would get drunk and violent. He was punching the teachers, he was punching some girl who wouldn’t go out with him, he was pummeling people Andy hardly even knew. Patrick wanted to kill Andy so no one would ever see how weak, how terrified, how vulnerable he really was.</p><p>            And then it was over, and he was alone. The pain hit him suddenly, as the punches finally caught up with his body.</p><p><em>            I can’t be dead,</em> he thought, lying unmoving in the alleyway,<em> I hurt too much to be dead.</em></p><p>            Though Andy’s eyes were still squeezed shut, he could feel attention on him – passersby must have seen the fight. There was a man approaching.</p><p>            “Hey! Hey, kid, you all right?”</p><p>            A shopkeeper, Andy knew. Then he placed the voice – Mr. O’Neil, who owned the convenience store around the corner. Andy suddenly knew that Mr. O’Neil had seen the bullies chasing him by the shop, and charged out of the store in pursuit, in the middle of a transaction. He’d run after them, recognizing them, knowing there would be trouble.</p><p>            Andy’s head spun, and he felt like he was going to throw up. He didn’t have the strength to care he was looking at the older man’s thoughts, wrong or right.</p><p>
  <em>            Oh, thank God for you, Mr. O’Neil.</em>
</p><p>            “I saw them chasing you,” the shopkeeper said. “That Patrick’s gonna get a whupping when his father finds out about this. Can you talk?”</p><p>            Andy coughed weakly and tried to speak, but all that came out was a choking sound.</p><p>            “I’ll get you some ice. Can you walk back to my shop? You can call your parents from inside, where it’s safe. We’ve got to get you to a doctor. Come on.”</p><p>            Andy nodded weakly. Leaning on the kind shopkeeper, Andy limped back to the store.</p><p>            Now what would he tell his parents? His coach? They’d ask what happened, and he’d have nothing to say except that he was jumped on the way home from school. He couldn’t tell them why Patrick hated him. He couldn’t tell them about what was happening in Patrick’s family.</p><p>            He hadn’t been attacked for anything he’d done, he’d been attacked simply for what he was.</p><p>            And as he sat in the store, ice pack to his face, he remembered the boy in the Psi Corps PSA. That kid had been beaten up too, hadn't he?</p><p>*****</p><p>            Andy tried to avoid Patrick. They only shared one class – science. Andy tried to go the whole period without looking at Patrick, and the bully, for his part, knew better than to threaten Andy in front of a teacher. But sometimes when he was bored, he would sit quietly and envision different ways of murdering Andy, trying to get him to react.</p><p>            In his fantasies, Patrick was shooting him in half with an assault weapon. Burning him with a bottle of gasoline and a torch. Hanging him. Feeding him to vicious rats. Tossing him off a cliff.</p><p>            Andy began to dread science class, and usually arrived late. He considered skipping, but worried that would attract too much attention from the teacher. He didn’t want Patrick to have the satisfaction of watching Andy get punished. Worse, it might even encourage him.</p><p>            The torture went on and on. Andy pretended not to notice. If he reacted, he told himself, then Patrick would have even more confirmation that Andy really was telepathic. Maybe, Andy worried, he’d try to kill him for real.</p><p>            One day, the teacher asked him to stand up and name each structure of the plant cell on the screen as she pointed to them.</p><p>            “Nucleus,” Andy said, “chloroplast…”</p><p>            He flinched visibly. Patrick had tossed him in an oven, alive.</p><p>            “Uh, uh… cell wall…”</p><p>            He flinched again – Patrick was chopping his limbs off with a chainsaw.</p><p>            He’d had enough. He mumbled that he didn’t know the other answers, apologized, and sat down. No one would think he was a telepath if he said he <span class="u">didn’t</span> know the answers, right?</p><p>            “Retard,” he heard Patrick mumble under his breath.</p><p>            Day after day the torment went on. He was poisoned. He was strapped to dynamite like in an old-fashioned cartoon. He was ripped apart by hyenas. He was decapitated by a knight with a sword. The one infinite resource in the universe, Andy decided, was Patrick’s sadistic imagination.</p><p>            He wanted to stand up in class and scream for Patrick to shut up. He wanted to tell the teacher what was happening. He wanted to switch to another science class. He wanted one person – just one person – to witness the hell Patrick was putting him through.</p><p>            No one saw. When Andy’s grades continued to fall, the teacher asked Andy to stay after school for extra help, and again, Andy obediently went, but said nothing about Patrick’s creative torment.</p><p>            One day, the fantasies changed. Instead of random and outrageous violent scenarios, the new thoughts were much more methodical and mundane. There was a knife hidden in the bushes, he saw, a knife Patrick had stolen from his own kitchen. And Patrick had asked several of his friends to meet him under the flagpole after school, the same flagpole where the school would gather every morning for the pledge.</p><p>            Patrick and the other boys would hide under the bushes, Andy realized – Patrick would grab the knife, and they’d ambush Andy as he walked home. Patrick, either because he was stupid or because he was just that obsessed, played the fantasy over and over in his mind that day in class, especially the part where he pulled out the knife and – somehow impressing all the other boys and the girl of Patrick’s dreams – stabbed Andy repeatedly.</p><p>            Andy wished there was even one person he could trust and ask for help, but there wasn’t. Patrick hadn’t threatened him aloud, and he hadn’t written a threat down. There was nothing to show an adult that could prove anything. What would he say, that Patrick was <span class="u">thinking about</span> killing him that afternoon? How would he explain knowing that?</p><p>            He went to history class and drew squiggles for all the exam answers. He didn’t give a shit about the art and culture of the great Centauri Empire.</p><p>            Maybe, he thought, this would turn out to be just another sadistic fantasy. Maybe there was no knife, maybe it was all in Patrick’s imagination. Maybe Patrick was trying to trick him into telling a teacher, so Patrick would find out if Andy was actually telepathic, for real.</p><p>            In line for lunch at the cafeteria, he spotted one of Patrick’s buddies, Dan, standing about ten feet off, chatting with some other friends.</p><p><em>            I can find out if he knows about it</em>, Andy realized suddenly. <em>I can find out right now if they really plan to ambush me.</em></p><p>            He still didn’t think it was right to do, but he knew he had to put his own life first. The information he was looking for wasn’t right at the surface of the other boy’s mind – that was a conversation about football – but it wasn’t too far behind.</p><p>            Dan stopped talking, disoriented for a moment, a little bit dizzy. He sat down. Then it was over.</p><p>            Patrick had indeed told him to meet up at the flagpole after school got out that day, because there was going to be a fight.</p><p>            “Who you fighting?” Dan had asked.</p><p>            “Mora. The shithead. He called my mom a whore. I’m gonna whup him.”</p><p>            “Yeah, yeah, sure, I’ll be there.”</p><p>            A knot of panic formed in Andy’s stomach. It was true. And the knife was probably there, too, under that bush.</p><p>
  <em>            Oh my God, he’s going to try to kill me for real.</em>
</p><p>            Andy mentally ran down his options, and there weren’t many. He could take another route home, but there was nothing to stop Patrick from trying again the next day, or the next. If he told an adult, he had no proof whatsoever of Patrick’s plans. He could run out of school during lunch period, try to find the knife, and skip the afternoon classes, but then he’d get in trouble, and he’d have to explain his odd behavior to his parents. And Patrick could always steal another knife or find another weapon. Maybe he’d delay the attack by a few days, or even a week, but if the other boy really wanted to try to kill him, sooner or later he’d find a way to catch Andy off guard. He was telepathic, not omniscient.</p><p>            Andy hardly touched his lunch. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he didn’t want the meal to be his last.</p><p>*****</p><p>            When the school bell rang, Andy was the first one out the door. He planted his feet under the flagpole.</p><p><em>            You want an ambush, you son of a bitch?</em> he thought. <em>You’re gonna get one.</em></p><p>            Slowly the other students filed out the doors, waiting for the bus, for rides, talking to friends. The flag overhead flapped in the breeze, with a loud <em>clap, clap, clap.</em> Unlike in the old time vids, there was no tumbleweed.</p><p>            <em>Come on, Patrick, come on.</em></p><p>            The flag flapped, the students chatted. Ground cars came and went.</p><p>            <em>I’m not weak. I’m not a victim. I’m not his punching bag. I’ll teach him never, ever to mess with me again.</em></p><p>            Seconds ticked by in the chilly October air, until finally Patrick and his three buddies appeared.</p><p>            “Mora? What the hell are you doing here?” Patrick began, before Andy punched him in the face. His fist connected with a very satisfying <em>thunk</em>.</p><p>            “I know what you’re planning!” Andy screamed, kicking Patrick in he groin and knocking him to the ground. “You think you can kill me, do you? You’ll never kill me! You can rot in hell!”</p><p>            He felt the eyes of half the school on him – their alarm mixing with the satisfying panic from Patrick.</p><p>            <em>Never again,</em> he told himself,<em> never again.</em></p><p>            As Andy fell on top of Patrick and pummeled him, Patrick’s friends stood motionless, as if time had stopped, and the world had flipped upside down.</p><p>
  <em>            Andy Mora’s kicking Patrick’s ass?</em>
</p><p>            “Go Patrick, get him!”</p><p>            “Show that shit who’s boss!”</p><p>            But Patrick lay on his back in the dirt, pinned down under Andy’s weight, terrified.</p><p>            “Swear you’ll never hurt me again!” Andy was screaming. “You wanna get up? Swear it!”</p><p>            “Help!” was all the other boy cried, tears running down his cheeks.</p><p>            Andy felt someone grabbing him from behind and pulling him off.</p><p>            “Andy! Andy! What are you doing?!”</p><p>            He turned.</p><p>            He saw disbelief. He saw horror. He saw disappointment.</p><p>            He saw his coach.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Andy was suspended from school for two days. His coach cut him from the team, and gave him a long, moralistic speech. Andy’s parents grounded him indefinitely.</p><p>            “You’re not to leave this room other than to eat or use the toilet,” his father said. “And all you’re doing is homework, are we clear?”</p><p>            “Suspension isn’t a vacation, this is punishment,” said Andy’s mom. “We are beyond horrified at your actions. More than that, we’re disappointed. You can go back to school in two days, but you’re still grounded. No vids. No calls. No parties. No friends.”</p><p>            It wasn’t as if he had any friends left, anyway. He opened his mouth to speak.</p><p>            “But-”</p><p>            “And don’t you even try to tell us this isn’t fair. You deserve it, and you know you deserve it. You know what you did was wrong. This is to teach you a lesson.”</p><p>            Andy sat on his bed, his hands balled into fists. They didn’t understand. They didn’t even want to understand.</p><p>            “Can I at least walk Lucy?” he asked.</p><p>            “No. We’ll do that. Your job is to do your homework and think about your actions.”</p><p>            “I know you’re angry,” said Andy’s mom, “I know Patrick was bullying you, but that doesn’t give you the right to hit him first. And I’m sorry you got cut from the team, but maybe this will teach you that your actions have consequences.”</p><p>            “That’s not what happened!” Andy shouted as hot tears started to form in his eyes. “Don’t you even want to hear my side of the story?!”</p><p>            “I don’t want to listen to your excuses, Andy,” his mother answered coldly, her arms crossed. “Half the school saw the fight. The principal told us about it. Your coach told us about it. We know you hit him first.”</p><p>            Andy bit his lip. <em>I started it? Only if those “fantasies” of Patrick’s don’t count. You can’t see it, so you think it’s not real. You try living with images of being slaughtered in your mind every day in class, and not being able to tell anyone-</em></p><p>            “You’re grounded until you accept responsibility for starting the fight.”</p><p>            “But that’s not what happened!” he shouted back, tears rolling down his cheeks. “You don’t want the truth, you just want to punish me!”</p><p>            His mother’s eyes were hard as polished steel. He knew that look. She used to look at him like that when he was little, when she would hit him for misbehaving.</p><p>            He shrank inside.</p><p>            What would his parents rather he have done, tell a teacher and get called a liar? Ignore the problem and let Patrick send him to the ICU?</p><p>            “Don’t come out of your room until you’re ready to take responsibility for your actions and apologize to us. And to Patrick.”</p><p>            “Apologize to <span class="u">Patrick</span>? Patrick was planning to <span class="u">kill me</span>! He was planning to kill me, do you hear me?!”</p><p>            The door slammed shut, ending the discussion.</p><p>            Andy collapsed on his bed in tears.</p><p><em>            I’m cursed,</em> he thought, between sobs. <em>I’m cursed. </em> <em>No track team, no friends, my parents hate me… What good is it to be alive, but dead anyway?</em></p><p>*****</p><p>            Andy’s parents let him come downstairs for supper. On the television, a man and woman sat in their bedroom, alone, worried.</p><p>            “I’m concerned about Moira,” said the woman. “Her school called and told me she’s been suspended for cheating.”</p><p>            “Again?” asked the man. “They suspended her just last week!”</p><p>            “She said she can’t help it, that she knows what her classmates are thinking without even trying. I don’t understand! Poor Moira, now she just sits in her room and cries!”</p><p>            “Don’t worry,” said the man, sullenly. “I’m sure we’ll find someone who can help us.”</p><p>            A Psi Cop suddenly materialized.</p><p>            “Look, a Psi Cop!” exclaimed the woman.</p><p>            “That’s right!” the Psi Cop told the concerned parents, a smile on her face. “There are a lot of parents just like you, overwhelmed and scared, but you don’t have to be. Psi Corps is here to help. Moira’s teachers don’t understand her, but we do.”</p><p>            The parents looked relieved.</p><p>            “Moira is special,” the Psi Cop continued. “We will teach her to control her talents and use them productively in society.”</p><p>            “Our Moira, a telepath?” the man asked.</p><p>            “To be sure, take her down to the Psi Corps Testing Center first thing tomorrow. If she qualifies, we’ll give her a free education, a job for life, and even a government backed pension plan! Commercial telepaths always earn fair wages because the Corps is their union.<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> We’ll even give her free medical care for life!”<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a></p><p>            When Moira emerged from her room, she wore a school uniform and black gloves. “Thank you, Mom and Dad,” she said, “for getting me tested. I no longer feel so alone, because I’m at school with others like me! I’m so proud to be a member of the Corps!”</p><p>            “And we’re proud of you, too!”</p><p>            Andy ate in silence, then stomped back upstairs to his room. <span class="u">His</span> parents would never be proud of him.</p><p>*****</p><p>            The day Andy returned to school, he was called out of class and asked to report to the principal’s office.</p><p><em>            Oh no, not again,</em> he thought. <em>I just got back here and already they’ve got something new against me.</em></p><p>            Were they really going to demand he write an apology note to Patrick?</p><p><em>             Never,</em> he told himself. <em>They can suspend me for the whole year and I’ll <span class="u">never</span> apologize to Patrick.</em></p><p>            The principal stood next to a young woman in a sharp business suit. She had her back to the doorway, but he could see she wore black gloves.</p><p>            He froze.</p><p>
  <em>            Oh no.</em>
</p><p>            Half the school had seen the fight. His friends must have told the teachers about his recent changes, and the principal had called the Corps. Was this a good thing or a bad thing?</p><p>            The telepath was certainly <span class="u">exotic</span>, in the way she stood, the clean lines of her suit, the otherworldly confidence with which she carried herself. She almost seemed to radiate with presence, in a way Andy could not describe. The principal seemed dull in comparison, like an ordinary rock next to a glittering diamond.</p><p>            Andy cautiously stepped into the office, and the lady turned, saw him and smiled.</p><p>            “You must be Andy,” she said, knowing the answer before she asked.</p><p>            He nodded, scared. “Yes ma’am.”</p><p>            “My name is Tess,” she said, smiling. He noticed she wore a copper psi insignia badge on her suit.</p><p>            “What did I do this time?” he asked cautiously, looking at the principal. “I just got back. I haven’t gotten in any fights today. It’s only 11:30.”</p><p>            “No, no, Andy, you’re not in any trouble,” Tess said, and looked at the principal with concern.</p><p>            “If I’m not in any trouble, why I am here?” Andy looked from her to the principal and back.</p><p>            “I’m here to give you some tests,” replied Tess.</p><p>            Andy swallowed. Could he fake his way out?</p><p>            She motioned him over to a seat at the small conference table in the principal’s office. The principal stood by the old-fashioned bookcase, clearly worried, her mouth in a tight frown.</p><p><em>            She’s never seen this before</em>, Andy realized. Not the testing – she’d seen testing many times. She’s never seen a test come back <span class="u">positive</span><em>.</em> She wasn’t quite sure what to expect.</p><p>            The principal shut the office door.</p><p>            Andy sat. “So what if I know what people are thinking?” Andy asked. “That doesn’t make me anything.”</p><p>            <em>He knows!</em> the principal thought in shock.</p><p>            “Very good, Andy,” Tess was saying. “That’s exactly what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to test you, actually.”</p><p>            “I’m not getting suspended again?”</p><p>            “No.”</p><p>            She smiled so sweetly.</p><p>            Tess asked Andy to look her in the eye while they spoke. She asked similar questions to the ones he’d been asked in testing the year before – about his favorite vids, sports teams, about his hobbies and family – except back then, there had only been questions, and he’d never felt anything else before being let out with the others to play. Now, he felt intense attention in his mind. As he talked, Tess looked back at him, into him – assessing, measuring.</p><p>            To anyone else, it might have looked like small talk, but Andy knew it wasn’t.</p><p>            “Have you been getting low grades in school lately?” Tess asked.</p><p>            This was for the principal, he knew. The test was over, but the principal didn’t know that. Tess wanted the principal to hear the truth.</p><p><em>            You can trust me</em>, her eyes said.</p><p>            “Yeah, I wrote nonsense on my exams, so no one would think I was cheating.”</p><p>            “Have your friends noticed anything different about you?”</p><p>            “They stopped talking to me, they laughed at me and called me a freak.”</p><p>            The principal stood a few paces off, the blood drained from her face, and she nervously twirled a ring around her finger, over and over.</p><p><em>            One in a thousand…</em><a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> <em> It’s true, oh my God, we really do have a telepath in this town…? Here? In my school?</em></p><p>            “You said, Andy, that sometimes, without meaning to, you would reply to what people were going to say before they said it?”</p><p>            He nodded. “Or what they were reading, stuff like that.”</p><p>            “And have you ever looked in someone’s mind for information that wasn’t on the surface? It’s OK if you have, you’re not in any trouble.”</p><p>            He nodded. “Yeah, that’s how I knew Patrick was going to try to kill me.”</p><p>            The principal’s eyes darted to the door and back, like those of a caged animal.</p><p>            “I actually want to congratulate you on your restraint, Andy,” Tess replied.</p><p>            “My <span class="u">what</span>?” He goggled at her.</p><p>            “You may not have realized it, but you could have accidentally seriously injured that boy with a thought, maybe even killed him<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> – accidentally of course.” Andy felt a twinge in his gut, knowing she knew exactly how he’d really been feeling during the fight. “You’re very strong, and you haven’t been trained. The Corps will train you.”</p><p>            “I could have <span class="u">what</span>?”</p><p>            The principal was shaking.</p><p>            Tess looked up at her, though she still spoke to Andy. “I’m very glad your principal called the Corps before something very tragic happened to either of you. It always breaks my heart when we get those kinds of calls, knowing if we’d only been notified in time, we could have prevented it.” She sighed. “We try so hard to reach children as quickly as possible... that’s why we put out so many public service announcements. Every community is different. Sometimes we don’t get the call until someone’s injured or dead, usually the young telepath. It starts with bullying, but can escalate quickly.”<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a></p><p>            Andy felt completely numb, inside and out. He stared at the grain of the wood in the principal’s conference table, anything to take his mind off of what was happening.</p><p>            She believed him about Patrick’s intentions. She really believed him. She’d seen this before. She-</p><p>            And he could have killed Patrick with his mind? Was this why his coach had talked about telepathy in terms of carrying a gun? Andy felt sick. That wasn’t fair at all – Patrick didn’t have to be “licensed,” and he was the one who had been plotting murder.</p><p>            Andy hoped he’d misunderstood.</p><p>            Tess stood and asked Andy to leave the room for a moment, while she and the principal had a few words.</p><p><em>            Restraint?</em> he thought, staring at the landscape painting on the wall in the main office.<em> She just congratulated me on restraint? I hope she tells my parents that!</em></p><p>            After a few minutes, Tess joined him in the other room, and took him aside out in the hall.</p><p>            “You’re going to a new school, Andy,” she said. “A school with kids like you.<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> That’s what I was talking to your principal about just now. You’re special, Andy. You deserve to be in a school where people appreciate your gifts, <span class="u">all</span> your gifts.”</p><p>            Andy thought about the public service announcement that he’d seen during supper a couple days earlier. “Everyone here hates me,” he said.</p><p>            “They don’t understand you,” she replied, sounding for a moment like the Psi Cop in the vid. “And they’re jealous, because you have something they’re never going to have. You’re gifted, Andy. It’s not going to be easy… it never is.”</p><p>            He nodded, uncomfortable. He didn’t really want to go to a new school, even though things were bad at his present one. What if the new school was even worse? He wouldn’t know anyone there. He didn’t know what he wanted, other than for things to go back to the way they were before he had developed these new abilities.</p><p>            But then Tess looked him in the eye, and he felt strangely safe.<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> <em>I understand you</em>, the look said, and it was the first time he’d ever truly felt that way. She saw the pain he was in. She saw how unfairly his parents and coach were treating him.</p><p>            Tess gently lay a hand on his shoulder, and even through the gloves, Andy felt a warm wave of comfort.<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> Her radiance surrounded him, as if she was hugging him, even though she wasn’t.</p><p>            Andy felt something inside him shift, something in his chest he hadn’t even realized he was carrying. He started to cry, and he didn’t even know why. A cold, tight place in him melted, then overflowed.</p><p>
  <em>            She sees me, she really sees me. I’m not invisible. I’m not alone.</em>
</p><p>            It was like being rescued by Mr. O’Neil, only more so.</p><p><em>            It’ll be all right,</em> she said without speaking. <em>No one will hit you anymore. All telepaths are family.<a href="#_ftn9" id="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a></em></p><p>            She knew about Patrick’s bullying, but he could feel she also knew more – the times Andy’s mother hit him as a child, his mother’s volatile temper. He felt as if he was perched at the top of a rollercoaster, right before the plunge from the known into the unknown.</p><p>            He stood crying in the hall outside the principal’s office for what felt like half an hour, but maybe it was only several minutes. Time felt different. People walked past and stared for a moment, even his friend Geoff, but he didn’t care. The world flowed around and past them, as if they had stepped out of time. Tess didn’t move – her hand remained on his shoulder, her gentle, reassuring presence that everything was going to be all right now.</p><p><em>            All telepaths are brothers and sisters,</em> she was thinking. <em>The Corps is Mother and Father. And we look after our own, Andy. We do.</em></p><p>            The principal brought him out a box of facial tissues. When he at last dried his eyes for the last time, Tess took him to his locker to retrieve his things.</p><p>            Geoff was standing there. “Is that a Psi Cop, Andy?” he asked, in disbelief, talking right past the tester as if she wasn’t there.</p><p>            “Oh, gosh, no,” replied Tess. “I’m nowhere near strong enough to be a Psi Cop.”</p><p>            Geoff stared at her, then turned back to Andy. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think you were really…” He paused, unsure what to say around Tess, if she could feel what he was thinking. “I didn’t think that you could really be…” he looked back at Tess nervously, “-one of them.”</p><p>            Andy gathered his things in silence, thinking of the time on the bleachers, when he’d known what Geoff was reading. What was Geoff actually sorry for? Was he really sorry, or just scared of Tess?</p><p><em>            Stay away from me, Andy</em>, he’d said.<em> Just stay away from me.</em></p><p>            Geoff had believed it enough to treat Andy like dirt.</p><p>            Andy slammed his locker shut. He had nothing more to say. It didn’t even matter who had told the teachers about him while he was out – all that mattered was that Andy was leaving, and he wasn’t looking back.</p><p>            He was on a transport to the new school two days later.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> <em>Exercise of Vital Powers</em> (the Corps sets the standard commission rates for business telepaths). See also Deadly Relations, p. 196 (the Corps acts as the union for telepaths)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Inference. See the public service announcement in <em>And Now for a Word. </em>“And if he qualifies, we’ll give him an education, a job, a purpose. And, we’ll pay all his bills for life!”</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> <em>Mind War</em> (one in a thousand people has telepathic abilities). What percentage of these people are strong enough to join the Corps is not specified. Does Ironheart mean one in a thousand is strong enough to get a rating, or one in a thousand is strong enough to join the Corps? I personally read it as the former (in which case kids like Andy are even more rare than the principal thinks).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 57. (“Even a P5 could make a mess out of a normal.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Final Reckoning, p. 3-4. Twelve-year-old telepath boy gets into fight with older, normal boy and kills him, before he’s discovered by the Corps. The circumstances of this fight aren’t given in canon, but once the Corps takes him in, they grant him absolution and a new life (and may have gently erased the details of the fight from his memory).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> See Deadly Relations, p. 17-18, for four new children joining Bester’s cadre on Birthday. Julia is from a normal family. Children from normal families join the Corps when they develop telepathy.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> <em>Spider in the Web</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> <em>Id.</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref9" id="_ftn9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Throughout.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>November 2262. Chicago. Psi Corps school, Minor Academy.</p><p>            Andy arrived at his new school with only a small suitcase and the clothes on his back. He’d been told not to pack much – the Corps would provide everything he needed. So he arrived only with mementos of home – family photos and vids, pieces of his old life.</p><p>            The first changes were external. He was given a set of gold and umber long-sleeved school uniforms,<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> each with a psi insignia on the front. For outdoor wear, he received a matching windbreaker, coat, jogging pants and sneakers,<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> along with shiny black dress shoes for formal affairs.</p><p>            “You are thirteen, right?” asked Teacher Jovanović, a stern, older man with salt and pepper hair and gray, colorless eyes, but who nonetheless radiated with the same sort of presence Andy had felt around Tess, a subtle bending of the mental space around him.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> He wore a shiny badge like Tess had.</p><p>            Andy nodded.</p><p>            “You are no longer a child, so you must dress modestly.”<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a></p><p>            He handed Andy a pair of thin black leather gloves, and Andy obediently put them on. It felt odd to wear gloves indoors.</p><p>            The teacher gestured. “They are special. Do you know why we wear them, Mr. Mora?”</p><p>            He didn’t know. They seemed like ordinary gloves, similar to those worn in winter, except these had only a thin silk lining.</p><p>            “Telepaths have worn gloves since the beginning of the Corps, even earlier – for one hundred and fifty years. Normals passed laws to distinguish us on sight,<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> laws that are still in effect today. That is also why we wear this insignia.” He gestured to the badge on his chest.</p><p>            Andy felt queasy. He’d be marked and separated for the rest of his life? That couldn’t be right. He had to have misunderstood.</p><p>            The older man didn’t seem angry about his fate, just matter-of-fact. “But we are not our ancestors,” he continued. “They may have resented it, but we do not. We adapt. We are proud. Gloves mark boundaries – between childhood and adulthood, between public and private, between the inner and the outer, clean and dirty.<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> Between us and them.”</p><p>            “Them,” Andy could tell, meant normals.</p><p>            “We always wear gloves in public.<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> And we do not touch one another without them… unless we’re married, of course.”<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a></p><p>            He led Andy to a separate room. When Andy emerged, clad in his new uniform, the teacher smiled proudly, and led him to a full-length mirror.</p><p>            The clothes were the right size, but they didn’t feel right. Andy didn’t know the boy staring back at him. He looked like the one in the public service announcement, except for the different style uniform, and without his hair slicked. He looked foreign.</p><p>            No one wore uniforms in his normal school. The only people who wore uniforms were soldiers in EarthForce. His dad had spent twenty years in the service.</p><p><em>            Who am I in this place?</em> he wondered. <em>Will I ever fit in here? Will I ever be able to go home?</em></p><p>            The teacher adjusted Andy’s collar slightly, and nodded approvingly. “You look sharp now, don’t you think?”</p><p>            The boy in the mirror nodded back, uncertainly.</p><p>            “How does the saying go, Andy… when in Rome?”</p><p>            “Do as the Romans.”</p><p>            “Nonsense. You’re in the Corps.” The teacher grinned knowingly. “All telepaths are brothers and sisters, whether we live in Rome, or here, or on Mars. No matter where you live, the Corps is still your Mother and Father, and always will be.”</p><p>*****</p><p>            The new wardrobe wasn’t so bad in the winter, Andy decided, but he dreaded the summer. No one on campus wore short pants or sleeves. Even when swimming, he heard, students had to remain modestly covered, especially their hands.</p><p>            Andy was assigned to a dorm with students his age, a long, low, concrete building whose corridors were decorated with Psi Corps motivational posters, urging him to eat healthy foods, dress modestly, and study hard. His room was equally spartan – two simple beds sat against the far wall, each under a window that overlooked the campus quad. The bed on the right had been neatly made, and stood next to a desk covered with books, writing implements and digital devices. His desk, on the left wall, was empty, and the cubby over it contained only two books: a thin one called the Psi Corps Student Handbook, and a thicker one entitled the Minor Academy Course Reader, Volume 1.</p><p>            Andy thumbed through the books – the reader looked especially interesting, as it contained stories from history and literature – and then inspected the rest of the room. The small closet had been partitioned in two – even if Andy had wanted to bring all his clothes, there wouldn’t have been space. Two posters hung over his roommate’s bed: one of a Psi Cop, and another of a group of smiling telepath teens standing in front of a large Psi Corps insignia, under which was written:</p><p>COOPERATION</p><p>We are all stronger together!</p><p>Matri nostrae ac Patri semper fidelis!<a href="#_ftn9" id="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a></p><p>            Andy made his bed, listening to the flap of the flags outside in the courtyard. He heard someone enter the room from behind.</p><p>            “Hey!” said a high voice. “You must be my new roommate! I’m Hideo.”</p><p>            Andy turned, and did a double-take – everyone he’d seen since he stepped off the transport had had that same “three-dimensional” presence, but this boy “looked” like the normals back in Andy’s school, even though he wore the same Psi Corps school uniform.</p><p>            “You’re not telepathic,” Andy said, and then realized how terrible that sounded.</p><p>            <em>That’s the best you could do for a hello?</em> he chided himself.<em> You’re never going to have any friends.</em></p><p>            “I’m only thirteen!” the boy replied, bristling. “I <span class="u">am</span> a telepath!”</p><p>            “Sorry. I’m new here.”</p><p>            “So what that I haven’t got it yet?<a href="#_ftn10" id="_ftnref10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a> You going to be a snob about it?”</p><p>            “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be. I just thought everyone here was a telepath.”</p><p>            “I told you, I <span class="u">am</span> a telepath! My parents are both telepaths!”<a href="#_ftn11" id="_ftnref11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a></p><p>            Andy felt like a jerk, but not for long, because soon the whole floor had come to meet him, boys and girls alike. The small dorm room wouldn’t hold everybody, so they went out into a lounge at the end of the hall, where the walls were covered in large art projects. The students surrounded him and bombarded him with questions, from the mundane to the very personal.</p><p>            “What’s your name?”</p><p>            “Where are you from?”</p><p>            “Is that the city, or the country?”</p><p>            “Are there other telepaths in your family?”</p><p>            “Do you like boys, or girls, or both or neither?”</p><p>            Andy turned to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy who had asked him that. “I like Narn,” he shot back, sarcastically.</p><p>            Everyone laughed. “You can’t like Narn!” said the freckle-faced kid. “They have no telepaths.<a href="#_ftn12" id="_ftnref12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a> You have to like humans.”</p><p>            “No I don’t, the president of the Interstellar Alliance married a Minbari, didn’t he?”</p><p>            “Yeah but that’s just weird.”</p><p>            Andy noticed that there weren’t any adults in sight – the students were very independent, at least as a group. They reminded Andy of a school of fish in the way they fit together, a seamless, flowing entity with its own subtle internal structure. He was the new, shiny pebble in their tank, the novelty that everyone wanted to swim up and touch.</p><p>            “Were you all raised in the Corps?” he asked the group, sensing the answer.</p><p>            The sea of heads nodded. “The ten of us are from Cadre 1.”</p><p>            “And we’re Cadre 2.”</p><p>            “Three!” Hands went up gleefully. “You’re sitting next to the project we did last year.”</p><p>            Andy turned and saw the small plaque identifying the installment and its creators. Several girls ran over and pointed to the parts of it that they’d worked on, telling Andy what they were especially proud of.</p><p>            “What’s it supposed to be?” Art had never been Andy’s strong suit – all he could see was paint, paper, a network of string, gloves and abstract interconnected shapes, all together within a huge red border. Words were scattered throughout, handwritten onto the background, or hanging on small cards from the string – “mother,” “father,” “cadre,” “Corps,” “strength,” “sacrifice,” “family,” “no other.”</p><p>            “It represents family,” one of the girls said, like this was intuitively obvious. “Every cadre did a project. They’re in all the dorms, in the cafeteria, in the classrooms.”</p><p>            Andy shrugged. He didn’t see “family” in that pattern of shapes at all.</p><p>            “And you?” he asked. “You were all raised in the Corps?”</p><p>            ”Yes,” said a Black boy named Kit, who Andy could tell was very strong telepathically and someone all the other students looked up to. He explained that they had grown up in cadres, groups of about a dozen children who all ate, slept and even, when they were younger, bathed together under the care of nannies.</p><p>            “But now that we’re all in the Minor Academy,” Hideo told him, “we’ll finally get to leave campus, and see the city.” None had left school grounds since they’d arrived, most around the age of three.</p><p>            “You’ve never seen normals?!”</p><p>            “Some of the support staff here aren’t rated highly enough to be in the Corps,” offered Deepa, a girl with coffee skin and dark brown eyes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her voice held a trace of pity. “But they’re not normals, they’re P1s and P2s. They were raised in the Corps, so they choose to wear gloves like we do. Only Mr. Kahn, the head gardener, was raised as a normal. He wears gloves here, of course, like all adults do in the Corps, but there’s a rumor he takes them off when he leaves campus.”</p><p>            The students giggled.</p><p>            “He’s sort of a normal,” Henry offered. “I mean, not a dangerous normal, obviously…”</p><p>            “He said that normals think of him as a telepath, and that’s why he prefers to be here.”</p><p>            “It’s safer to be in the Corps,” offered another boy, definitively, and all the other children nodded. “The outside world is a scary place.”</p><p>            Andy remembered Patrick. Some normals were dangerous, certainly, but the whole world? Most normals weren’t like that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Gregory Keyes, Deadly Relations, p. 41, 47</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> <em>Id.</em>, p. 47</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 212-213</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Telepaths get their gloves at twelve or thirteen (canon is unclear), and have to wear them in public from then on. Wearing gloves is a mark of adulthood, which comes with additional responsibility. See Deadly Relations, p. 37 (Bester and his cadre receiving their gloves), Final Reckoning, p. 68 (“In the Corps, you always wore gloves, except when you were alone – or intimate.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Gregory Keyes, Dark Genesis, inference</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> Being in public without gloves is equivalent to being naked. See Final Reckoning, p. 15 (“His face seemed to have more lines each time he looked at it, but all in all he looked pretty good for a man of eighty-two. Except for his hands, which jarred him every time. Pink, gloveless - naked. He flexed his right hand, the good one. When he was a teenager, he’d had nightmares now and then that he was out in public, without his gloves. Telepaths didn’t wear gloves anymore, so he couldn’t either, not without being noticed. It made him feel dirty.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> <em>A Race Through Dark Places</em> (telepaths must wear a psi insignia badge and gloves when out in public).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Deadly Relations, inference. See Final Reckoning, p. 68. Telepaths do, of course, sometimes have sex outside of marriage, though teachers would not teach children of this age that this was appropriate behavior. See Deadly Relations, p. 136. Bester and his girlfriend have a sexual relationship when they are both nineteen: "He went, a little after nine. Liaisons like this were ambiguous territory - essentially everyone knew that students went to each other's rooms, and ostensibly it was forbidden. As long as you were careful, as long as appearances were maintained, no one really cared. Like a good parent, the Corps knew that sometimes it was best to be a little blind in one eye.</p><p>"So sneaking in was just a ritual, though there were penalties for being caught. He might be forbidden to associate with Liz for a time; leave, always difficult to get, might be entirely restricted."</p><p>See also <em>A Race Through Dark Places</em>; Talia taking off her gloves in Susan Ivanova’s apartment signals intimacy (implied also to be sexual).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref9" id="_ftn9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> “To our Mother and Father, always faithful” in Latin. Canon gives the Corps motto as “Maternis, Paternis,” except this isn’t grammatically correct in Latin. I do not know how this error came to be, but I decided to fix it.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref10" id="_ftn10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 7, 36. Most telepaths develop their abilities in their teens. Children of telepath parents attend Psi Corps schools, no matter when their abilities develop. In Geneva, they live in a separate dorm.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref11" id="_ftn11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> See Deadly Relations, p. 215. (“Lyta nodded affirmatively. “My mother was the only woman in our line in the last four generations who wasn’t [in Cadre Prime]. She was only a P2, so she was in the Basement at first, but when she was still pretty young, Grandma arranged for some relatives to raise her outside Teeptown. She was monitored, of course, but never actively attached to the Corps.””) Children of two telepath parents almost certainly grow up to be telepaths, though a small percentage do not rate highly enough to join the Corps.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref12" id="_ftn12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> Pilot <em>(The Gathering)</em> and elsewhere</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Every day began with a gathering in the courtyard. The whole school came out: from the smallest children, attended by their nannies and barely old enough to stand, to the most senior among the teachers and staff. The school community gathered around the flagpole, rain or shine, and faced the twin banners of the Earth Alliance and the Corps, gloved hands to their hearts.</p><p>            The first part of the pledge was the same as Andy had always said in school. The Corps had added a few new lines to the end, since now, Andy and the others weren't only citizens of the Earth Alliance, but also in the Corps.</p><p>
  <em>            “I pledge my body, heart, soul, and mind to the service of the Earth Alliance, and the people who dwell on her myriad spheres. I promise to keep the laws, to keep the faith, to keep my eyes on the truth. I pledge to serve my comrades, my school, and the Corps. The Corps teaches, guides, and provides. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. We are the children of the Corps.”<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a></em>
</p><p>            Andy stumbled through the second half of the pledge on the first day, confused, not knowing the new words or what they really meant, but as the days passed, he realized that if he was going to live in Rome, so to speak, he had to act like the Romans. He didn’t really like saying every morning that the Corps was his parents – he missed his real parents more and more – but he didn’t want to stick out and refuse to participate.</p><p>            The young children recited the pledge by rote, Andy noticed, while the adults gave the moment an almost religious significance. Andy wasn’t sure where he fit in. The only thing he could see was that, for this one brief moment every morning, all telepaths stood on equal footing with one another, regardless of age or status: all were “children” of the Corps, collectively – whatever that meant.</p><p>            The teachers read school-wide announcements, and everyone made their way to breakfast – the younger children at the nursery or with their cadres, and the older students in the cafeteria. Andy rarely saw the little ones again until the following morning, except during recreation time, playing in the courtyards of their cadre houses.</p><p>            Andy spent the rest of the day in classes, and then activities. Students had their choice of martial arts, fencing, or indoor rock climbing, while others took art and music. Only evenings were unstructured, giving Andy time to do his homework, watch vids, and write letters home. The structured, even regimented nature of life at school reminded Andy of his father’s stories from his days in EarthForce. Rooms had to pass inspection. Students all wore uniforms. Teachers talked about discipline. There were lots of rules: Students had to be in bed by nine at night. There was no smoking or drinking allowed on campus, or even chewing gum. Academy students could only wear official “standard issue” Corps clothing<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> on campus, and could not leave the premises without a day pass from the Corps.</p><p>            Everyone cared a great deal about modesty, especially about gloves.</p><p>            “Going outside without gloves would be like going out in public naked!” exclaimed Hideo, when Andy asked him about it. Andy remembered how the students had giggled at the thought of the groundskeeper leaving campus, bare-handed. He quickly learned that “outside” meant any space that wasn’t his dorm room, or the bathrooms, not merely outdoors. There were “public” spaces and “private” ones, and the one time Andy absentmindedly left the room without his gloves, lost in thought about an essay he had been writing, the stares from his classmates in the hallway immediately alerted him to his mistake. He’d run back inside, scared to come out again for hours.</p><p>            How was he ever going to fit in here?</p><p>            Andy wrote letters home every night, describing life at school, asking his parents to come visit. Family members could only visit on weekends or specially designated visiting days.</p><p>            “My roommate is nice, but a little too nosy,” he wrote. “If I don’t make my bed the right way, he makes it for me! I told him not to touch my stuff, but he insisted.”</p><p>            “Do the teachers care?” Andy had asked Hideo. “Will we get in trouble if the sheets aren’t tight enough?”</p><p>            Hideo shrugged. “I’m just showing you how I was taught,” he replied, crawling over the bed. “Back in the cadres, this is how we did it. You’re paying attention, right?”</p><p>            Andy nodded. He didn’t want to get in trouble with the teachers, but he didn’t understand why he had to make his bed in some special way. Did the Corps have its own way of doing everything? He’d already had to learn how to eat his meals with gloves on, and that was challenging enough. It wasn’t merely bad manners to eat with his fingers – wearing gloves made it nearly impossible.</p><p>            And to scratch his back was even worse!</p><p>            “I don’t get why you’re re-making my bed,” he told Hideo.</p><p>            “The Corps is Mother and Father, and we are all the children of the Corps,” his roommate replied, repeating the final lines of the pledge as he finished the bed. “That makes us brothers now.”</p><p>            “Brothers do this?” He and his sister Sasha had never made each other’s beds, back home.</p><p>            “The Corps teaches, guides, and provides,” Hideo answered, confidently. “You weren’t born in the Corps, so you need to be taught how we do things, and this is how the Corps taught me to do it. As your brother, it’s my duty to show you.” When he’d finished his task, he sat on the edge and slipped his gloves back on.</p><p>            “If you say so,” Andy replied.</p><p>            “The Corps gives us everything – food, clothes, dorms, a school. And when we get older, the Corps will give us all our jobs, and approve our marriages.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> The Corps is Mother and Father. We honor our parents by hard work, discipline, tidiness, and respect.”</p><p>            Andy knew Hideo meant him no harm, but he felt out of place, and missed his real family more than ever.</p><p>*****</p><p>            Andy made time to watch television almost every night, despite his intense schedule of classes, homework and activities. Although Andy and the other students weren’t allowed to watch the normal news, they watched daily broadcasts produced by the Corps instead.</p><p>            <em>“Late last night, Psi Cops successfully thwarted a rogue attack on Psi Corps facilities in Chicago. There were no injuries. Ten suspects were taken into custody. Director York met with the Senate oversight committee this morning to discuss the increase in attacks. He urged restraint on all sides, and assured the Senate that no additional assistance is needed, that the Corps is capable of addressing the problem within existing capabilities.”</em></p><p>            Attempted rogue attacks continued to be a frequent occurrence, but so far, the majority were unsuccessful, and no one at school was especially worried.</p><p>            “They’re never going to succeed, because they’re stupid,” said Kit. “That’s why they’re rogues.”<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a></p><p>            Everyone nodded.</p><p>            “The teachers say rogue telepaths are the enemy,” said Henry, “but I don’t think they really believe it.<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> They just have to say it. The rogues are our brothers and sisters, too, like they always say in the old vids. Rogues are confused, angry, lost. They blame the Corps for everything the mundanes have done to them.”</p><p>            Andy squirmed. “My family are normals,” he said. “Stop calling them that word, mundanes.”</p><p>            “Why?” Henry looked at Andy askance. “You know how dangerous they can be, and you know how much they hate us. Your classmate even tried to kill you, just because you’re a telepath!”</p><p>            Andy regretted telling his new friends about the Patrick incident. “Not all normals are like that! Most are good people!”</p><p>            Henry didn’t believe him, and just shook his head dismissively. <em>What does he know?</em> Andy mused, darkly. <em>He’s never met a normal, he’s never left campus. All he knows is what the Corps’ been spoon-feeding him.</em></p><p>            But Andy wasn’t leaving campus any time soon, either, so television became his escape from homesickness. Andy’s classmates made certain he saw all the classic Corps vids, some close to a century old. The vids showed a wide variety of career paths in the Corps; there were doctors<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> and lawyers,<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> scientists<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> and teachers<a href="#_ftn9" id="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a> while other telepaths worked in normal institutions, in businesses assisting with negotiations,<a href="#_ftn10" id="_ftnref10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a> helping the police identify suspects to crimes,<a href="#_ftn11" id="_ftnref11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a> or in hospitals helping with psychiatric diagnoses<a href="#_ftn12" id="_ftnref12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a> and facilitating communication for those too sick to speak. Most respected of all were Psi Cops.<a href="#_ftn13" id="_ftnref13" name="_ftnref13">[13]</a></p><p>            Telepaths, he learned, had a culture all their own, one defined partly by their unique history, and partly by their sensory experiences. Telepaths, he observed, commonly finished each other’s sentences and answered unspoken questions. “Blooping,” or letting one’s thoughts or feelings spill out in an uncontrolled manner, was frowned upon in adult company, as an improper, childish behavior. And just as normals would notice and react to a sudden noise or bright light, telepaths would also react to a “loud,” sudden change in the feelings and thoughts around them.</p><p>            Yet as much as Andy loved watching vids with his new friends and learning about their culture, letters from home remained the highlight of his life. Even the smallest news from home was worth more than anything in the universe.</p><p>            “Please come visit,” he begged in each letter. “I miss you all. Please come see me at school.” Even the memory of his mother’s fierce temper didn’t seem so bad.</p><p>            “They’ll come, you’ll see,” Andy told the others one night around the television. “They said they’d visit on Saturday.”</p><p>            “Normals don’t like to be around us,” Hideo replied. “One telepath is safe, maybe two, but not a whole campus. They’re too scared of us.”</p><p>            “You’ve never even met a normal! Who are you to talk?”</p><p>            “Many of the older students have normal parents. They don’t visit. Once, twice… if they even come at all.”</p><p>            “Mine are different, you’ll see!”</p><p>            Hideo shrugged and refused to argue. Andy remembered his mother’s attitude back at home.</p><p>            <em>Who would be proud to have a child in Psi Corps? I’d be terrified to have someone rooting around in my brain.</em></p><p>            With a sick feeling, he wondered if Hideo could be right. If his parents came to visit, they would see him dressed in his school uniform, gloves and all. What would they think? Would they even be able to look at him?</p><p>            “The teachers say normal parents don’t visit because they know that a telepath’s only true family is the Corps,” Hideo continued. “And it is, but I don’t think that’s why. I think they’re scared of us, and jealous.”</p><p>            Andy couldn’t believe it. There had to be some other reason. Either way, his were different. They wouldn’t abandon him in this strange school.</p><p>            The news that night covered a different kind of story.</p><p>
  <em>            “A domestic dispute has sadly turned tragic in Cincinnati. A fifteen-year-old normal fell into a coma two days ago after an altercation with his sister, now identified as a telepath. The parents accuse the Corps of negligence for not identifying their daughter’s abilities sooner, and removing her from the family.”</em>
</p><p>            The Corps broadcaster reminded the viewers that such accidents were extremely rare.</p><p>            “It can happen,” said Kit. “Even a P5 can make a mess of a normal.<a href="#_ftn14" id="_ftnref14" name="_ftnref14">[14]</a> To be good at psi combat requires a lot of training, but messing up a normal isn’t very hard. Perhaps she’d just got her psi, and didn’t know her own strength.”</p><p>            Andy thought of what Tess had told him. <em>We try so hard to reach children as quickly as possible, but every community is different. Sometimes we don’t get the call until someone’s injured or dead.</em></p><p>            He felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d come within an inch of doing that to Patrick.</p><p>            “Maybe her brother attacked her,” said Deepa. “Maybe she panicked.”</p><p>            “If only the Corps had got there in time!” exclaimed Larissa.</p><p>            “I bet the parents framed her for it because she’s a telepath,” offered Henry, the freckle-faced boy, lying on his stomach with his head in his hands. “Mundanes lie. They always blame us for everything. Nothing changes.”</p><p>            “Scum,” he heard someone else mumble.</p><p>            “Hey!” shouted Andy. “Most normals don’t murder people, and most normals don’t hate telepaths, either! And my family are so-called ‘mundanes’, remember? They’re not scum! They’re good people!”</p><p>            Everyone looked at Andy with silent caution and wary eyes, as if collectively wondering whether the newcomer to their nest was really of their flock, or instead a dangerous cuckoo imposter, gloves and all. Andy instantly regretted his outburst, feeling as he had when he’d accidentally walked out of his room bare-handed.</p><p>            Naked. Vulnerable. Out of place.</p><p>            “You’re a telepath, Andy,” said Kit after a long pause. “Your family is the Corps.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 6. Here, since the school is saying it together, “cadre” has been changed to “school.”</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 47. See also p. 41 (Julia is wearing a school uniform in the hall at school).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> The Corps arranges and approves telepath marriages. Dark Genesis, p. 117, 122-123, 134-135 (Liz intentionally mischaracterizes the rules as "breeding regulations"), 218, Deadly Relations, p. 130-132, 176-180, 184-186. See also <em>Ship of Tears</em>. While all other laws that restrict telepaths in some fashion come from normals, the marriage rules are Corps regulations. Normal law does not prohibit telepaths and normals from intermarrying. <em>Behind the Gloves</em> returns to the marriage regulations and the reasons for them later in the project.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 6-7</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> <em>Id.</em>, p. 199. The Corps used to teach that all telepaths are brothers and sisters, even the rogues. By 2253, the Corps was teaching children that rogue telepaths are the enemy.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> See Deadly Relations, p. 168-171, for a scene inside a Psi Corps medical center on Mars.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> Several episodes make mention of contracts with Psi Corps or written by Psi Corps, which implies that the Corps has its own legal department. See for example <em>Darkness Ascending</em>, and see <em>Moments of Transition</em> (power of attorney document, presumably drafted by the Corps, for Lyta’s remains). Also, a government agency of that size would need its own legal department. Telepaths are not, however, allowed to work as lawyers in normal society. See Dark Genesis, p. 32, Deadly Relations, p. 135.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Inference. Department Sigma must hire scientists in order to carry out their many covert scientific, medical and military projects. See, for example, <em>Mind War</em>, <em>Dust to Dust</em>.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref9" id="_ftn9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Deadly Relations, throughout.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref10" id="_ftn10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> Pilot <em>(The Gathering)</em>, <em>Mind War</em>, Tim Dehass. “The Psi Corps and You!” /Babylon 5 #11/, Dark Genesis, p. 83.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref11" id="_ftn11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> “The Psi Corps and You!” /Babylon 5 #11/</p><p><a href="#_ftnref12" id="_ftn12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> See <em>Eyes</em> for a mention of psychiatric diagnostic scans on normal patients. See Deadly Relations, p. 169 for a mention of psychiatric diagnostic scans on telepath patients. See <em>And Now A Word</em> for mention of telepaths working in hospitals for normal children (at least in part to work with young telepaths who are just manifesting).</p><p><a href="#_ftnref13" id="_ftn13" name="_ftn13">[13]</a> Deadly Relations, throughout.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref114" id="_ftn14" name="_ftn14">[14]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 57</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Though Andy’s classmates tried to include him in all their activities, his homesickness only deepened. The teachers told him that other students from normal households would be arriving soon, but for the moment he was alone with peers who’d been together since preschool - since the "cadres." He missed his friends back home, the way they’d used to be before he’d developed telepathy. Did they miss him at all? he wondered. Why hadn’t they written? Did their parents even allow them to contact him?</p><p>            His parents wrote and told him they could not visit on Saturday, after all. <em>Next week</em>, they said.</p><p>            Then they said the week after that.</p><p>            Sometimes he cried himself to sleep at night, thinking about his family and friends, about his cousins, his neighbors, about his coach, even about kind Mr. O’Neil who’d saved him when Patrick and his friends had beat him up in the alley. He thought about Lucy, the feel of his old bed, about his favorite clothes, Christmas with his grandparents, vacations at the beach, the smells and tastes of his parents’ cooking.</p><p>            Logically, he knew it wasn’t anything he had <span class="u">done</span> that had landed him here, but simply what he had <span class="u">become</span>. He knew it was out of his control, but he felt guilty for it nonetheless, even as he knew his feelings were irrational. If he hadn’t developed telepathy, none of this would have happened. Some nights he lay in bed awake, unable to sleep. The situation was out of his control, but knowing that only made it worse.</p><p>
  <em>            It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.</em>
</p><p>            He learned to avert his eyes as he passed the art installations, massive works that hung in all the common rooms of the dorms. Even looking at the projects now made his heart skip, especially in the dark of night. If he stopped to stare, to ponder, a quiet, cold terror seized him, and he could almost hear the paint, glue, and ripped paper whispering silently in the moonlight that he would <span class="u">never</span> be able to go home to his family, back to the normal world, not even when he graduated at nineteen – never.</p><p>            Somehow, since arriving at school, he had absorbed the deeper meaning of the artwork, as if through telepathic osmosis. <em>Family.</em> The ripped paper represented violence, he now knew – out in the wider world, telepaths were attacked regularly by normals, often for no reason at all.<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> The glue stood for healing – imperfect, messy – and the empty gloves honored telepaths who had been murdered, or killed in the line of duty protecting the Corps. All the remaining shapes in the figure were interconnected, overlapping – none could be removed without tearing the ones around it, or cutting the string, if not unraveling the entire project itself. And the red border, he knew – the red paint stood for blood.</p><p>            Was the life of telepaths truly framed on all sides by violence? he wondered. Or was that only how his classmates – sheltered within the walls of the school – understood the outside world?</p><p><em>            Normals aren’t like that,</em> he told himself.</p><p>            Yet salty tears fell on his gloves. And with each broken promise from his parents, he realized that something invisible now separated him from them, thin as black leather, but impossible to remove.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> See <em>The Corps is Mother the Corps is Father</em> (Psi Cop intern goes alone into DownBelow and is randomly murdered), <em>Secrets of the Soul</em> (Byron and another rogue telepath beaten up in DownBelow simply for being telepaths), <em>The Exercise of Vital Powers</em> (a telepath named Constance is hired and then murdered by Mr. Wade (who works for Mr. Edgars)). See also Dark Genesis, p. 1, 14, 31 (massacres of 2115), and Final Reckoning, p. 242 (massacres of 2115), see <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10293074/chapters/22772363">Josephine's story</a>; Dark Genesis p. 118-119, 157 (massacres of 2156); Dark Genesis p. 45 (popular comedian jokes on television about the violent murder of telepaths); Dark Genesis p. 48 (thirteen-year-old telepath boy “beaten within an inch of his life and left to die on the streets of Edinburgh,” four year old telepath girl “watched her whole family slaughtered execution style… shot, hacked with a machete, and left for dead. We found her under the corpse of her mother”), see <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324169/chapters/22823876">Stephen's story</a>; Deadly Relations, p. 48-50 and Final Reckoning, p. 243 (Bester gets beaten up by a normal on his first excursion off school grounds), see <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10358895/chapters/22887570">Milla's story</a>; Deadly Relations, p. 94-105 (trafficking, rape and murder of telepath teenager Fatima Cristoban); Deadly Relations, p. 213-236 (serial killer on Beta colony who targets telepaths, and tortures them before killing them, while the normal police cover up for the killer because they think “[he’s] doing a fine job, ridding [their] planet of teeps” (p. 219). The killer’s MO for torturing his victims is even described as typical on p. 221.) See also Final Reckoning, p. 242-243 (the random murder of telepaths by normals still occurs every few weeks across the world, even in 2272).</p><p>This list is representative, not exhaustive.</p><p>Unfortunately, even the Centauri hate their own telepaths, too. Dark Genesis, p. 157: "Now, then. You wished to speak about telepaths. Nasty creatures, I think. Always at your back, you know, helping your enemies to plot your downfall. Still, a great house cannot hope to succeed without at least a few. And the women can do quite interesting things when they put their minds to it." [The Centauri ambassador] cackled, slapping Kevin's shoulder. "Did you hear what I said? Put their minds to it."</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Andy had never heard of any massacres in 2115, in Chicago or elsewhere.</p><p>            His history class stood in the circle of towering, polished stones, each carved with names. A small fountain stood in the very center of the ring of a man and a woman, weeping. The sun shone brightly on the students, oblivious to the somberness of the moment.</p><p>            Eighteen thousand telepaths, Teacher Jovanović reminded the group, had been brutally murdered in 2115, across Earth, and on the Moon colony<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> – riots, bombings, spacings.<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> The teacher pointed to one stone in particular.</p><p>            “This,” he said, “is the memorial to the victims of the Chicago Riots.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> We cannot be certain that every person killed in the Riots was actually a telepath, because this was before mandatory registration,<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> but the majority did have the genetic marker. Some were probably latents who carried the gene.”</p><p>            As Andy reached out to touch the polished surface of the dark stone, he saw a hand reaching back, brushing fingertips with his own. He stood both outside the stone and inside it – in the present and in the past, all at once.</p><p>            Teacher Barbieri nodded. “Telepaths had existed since the beginning of time,” she said, “but in the mid to late 21<sup>st</sup> century, something began to change, and some people grew up much stronger than ever before. No one knew why, and that scared some of the normals. Others continued to stubbornly insist that we didn’t really exist,<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> that we were a hoax.”</p><p>            “Everything changed in 2115,” Teacher Jovanović continued. “The Chicago government was very corrupt, and the city had many problems. The mayor got a scapegoat when an article about telepaths was published in the New England Journal of Medicine,<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> and then a second article followed, identifying the genetic marker for telepathy.<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> The media exploded with fear – telepaths were dangerous, we were thieves and rapists, we could commit crimes and get away with it. The mayor blamed us for the corruption, claiming we were part of a secret conspiracy. People panicked. The police stole medical files and went after suspected telepaths. Riots went on all summer.”</p><p>            “See?” said Henry to Andy. “I told you they always blame us for everything, and nothing’s changed, but you didn’t believe me.”</p><p>            Andy watched the teacher carefully. There was something he wasn’t telling the group, Andy knew. It wasn’t the scapegoating part – that, Andy could feel, was completely true – but the older man was leaving something out. The moment went by quickly, almost as if it had been a slip, a suggestion placed into the back of his mind.</p><p>            Teacher Jovanović knew that at least half of the students had already developed telepathy. He knew they would be able to feel the omission, whatever it was. Surely someone as telepathically trained as Teacher Jovanović, Andy figured, would be able to hide a lie from his students if he wanted to.</p><p>            But he hadn’t. Why?</p><p>            The stones loomed ominously, and he fidgeted with his gloves in the wintry air.</p><p>            “As you all know,” Teacher Jovanović continued, “with the possible exception of our newcomer, Mr. Mora, Senator Lee Crawford of Texas courageously spoke up and offered a solution to the violence that summer – the registration of telepaths and the formation of the Metasensory Regulatory Authority, which became the predecessor to the Corps. In this way he stopped the violence against our people.”</p><p>            Andy had that eerie feeling again.</p><p>            Teacher Barbieri nodded. “Once the MRA was formed and telepaths began to come forward and be registered, the violence subsided. And then years later, after a second wave of terrible violence against telepaths,<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> Senator Crawford and President Robinson created the independently chartered Psi Corps<a href="#_ftn9" id="_ftnref9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a> to provide a safe place for telepaths to live and work in peace in service to humanity, where we could reach our maximum potential. Senator Crawford became the Corps’ first director.”</p><p>            Andy looked over to his classmates to see if they had noticed.</p><p><em>            I told you that the teachers sometimes say things they don’t believe,</em> Henry ‘cast, his eyes meeting Andy’s.</p><p>
  <em>            But what’s the part that’s not true?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>            Crawford. He caused the riots. Normals never made the Corps so we could do all that stuff about serving humanity – they made it to control us. But the teachers can’t say that.</em>
</p><p><em>            Why?</em> Andy asked.</p><p><em>            Why?</em> Henry looked at him with shock. <em>Because the director would have their heads! They can’t speak badly about the Corps’ first director!</em></p><p>            “Children were tested in school,” Teacher Barbieri was saying, “much like children are today, although back then they only tested for the gene itself.<a href="#_ftn10" id="_ftnref10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a> Today we know that many people with the gene never develop telepathy. The genes are very, very recessive.”</p><p>            She went on to tell the group how telepaths, then as now, came from every ethnicity, religion, and nation. Without the Corps, she said, telepaths would have remained forever fragmented and scattered. They never would have abandoned their differences and come together under a common social order, in much the same way as the nations of the world put aside their differences and unified into a world-wide Earth Alliance with the arrival of the Centauri.<a href="#_ftn11" id="_ftnref11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a> The Corps, she told the group, gave telepaths a path to <span class="u">progress</span>, like the Earth Alliance represented progress for all of humanity.</p><p><em>            It’s like what they say in the student handbook</em>, Henry ‘cast, <em>in the chapter on history. Some of it’s true, but not all of it, because the Corps handbook was really written by normals. The teachers can’t say it aloud, but it you listen closely to their thoughts, you can figure it out. They want us to know, get it?</em></p><p>            “And the founding of the Corps,” the teacher continued, “also strengthened the system by which telepath children from normal families could be identified quickly, before they were abandoned, abused or attacked by normals.”</p><p>            Andy thought of Patrick. He knew that lesson all too personally. That part, Andy knew, was certainly true.</p><p>            The sun continued to shine with callous cheeriness as the teachers directed the children’s attention to the large stone fountain. In the center, the figure of a man and woman sat, crying.</p><p>            Mother, Father, Andy realized.</p><p>            “This is the memorial to the babies,” Teacher Barbieri said. “When the genetic marker for telepathy was discovered, many mothers aborted their babies out of fear they might grow up to be telepaths.<a href="#_ftn12" id="_ftnref12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a> Though there are many genes involved in telepathy,<a href="#_ftn13" id="_ftnref13" name="_ftnref13">[13]</a> the genetic marker discovered in 2115 is always passed from mother to baby.<a href="#_ftn14" id="_ftnref14" name="_ftnref14">[14]</a> There would be many thousands more telepaths today, perhaps even millions, were it not for all those who were murdered in these early years, most before they were born.”</p><p>            Andy saw Brittany wiping tears from her eyes.</p><p>            “Don’t cry,” the teacher told her, kneeling down. “There is no abortion in the Corps. And the Corps adopts all abandoned telepath babies and raises them,<a href="#_ftn15" id="_ftnref15" name="_ftnref15">[15]</a> like the Corps raised you and me. The Corps is Mother and Father to us all.”</p><p>            Brittany nodded, sniffling. “My mother left me at the Psi Corps office when I was a few days old,” she told the teacher. “I don’t know who she was, other than she was a telepath.”</p><p>            Andy suddenly felt very guilty for all his whining that his parents never came to visit. She had no parents at all, and she’d listened to all his complaining and had never once told him about her own past.</p><p>            He’d been a selfish jerk, again.</p><p>            The children entered a small building nearby, where they watched footage from 2115 on a huge screen. The first clip showed crowds of normals protesting, holding signs, demanding of then-Senator Crawford that he be “harder” on telepaths,<a href="#_ftn16" id="_ftnref16" name="_ftnref16">[16]</a> even that he round up all the telepaths and send them to death camps.<a href="#_ftn17" id="_ftnref17" name="_ftnref17">[17]</a> Then came footage of the 2115 Chicago Riots – mobs smashed windows, torched homes and shops, and beat suspected telepaths in the streets, all while the police stood by and watched. In one clip, city police forcibly escorted a family out of their home, to a fate unknown. A little boy about seven or eight years old looked at the camera, his face paralyzed with fear, then turned and followed his parents out of sight. The scene shifted to images of mass graves.<a href="#_ftn18" id="_ftnref18" name="_ftnref18">[18]</a></p><p>            “But where were the Psi Cops to protect us?”<a href="#_ftn19" id="_ftnref19" name="_ftnref19">[19]</a> a boy asked, forgetting the historical context.</p><p>            “There were no Psi Cops then,” replied Teacher Jovanović, matter-of-factly.</p><p>            <em>No</em>, Andy thought, watching the images of piles of bodies. <em>This couldn’t have happened right here in Chicago. Normals are good people. They’re not like that!</em></p><p>            The images on the screen, however, told a different story.</p><p>*****</p><p>            A week passed, then another. Andy’s parents didn’t commit to a visit.</p><p>            “…I pledge to serve my comrades, my school, and the Corps. The Corps teaches, guides, and provides. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. We are the children of the Corps.”</p><p>            As he finished the pledge with his classmates early one Saturday morning, he saw motion to his left, and turned his head. His parents stood in the distance, watching the school assembly.</p><p>            His heart skipped in his chest. <em>A surprise visit?!</em></p><p>            Of course. It was almost Christmas.</p><p>            His joy at seeing them was drowned out by a new set of fears. He’d expected that when they came some day, they would see him in his uniform and gloves, but this was worse. The first thing they’d seen of his life at school was the pledge.</p><p>            Sensing Andy’s sudden spike of fear, the students near him looked left, to see what Andy was looking at. And less than a second later, the students around <span class="u">them</span> also turned to look.</p><p>            <em>Oh my God, most of the school is staring at my parents!</em></p><p>            He didn’t mean to bloop his feelings, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself while panicking.</p><p>            His classmates’ reaction was entirely reasonable – Andy’s panic must have been palpable to everyone within line of sight, and it was only natural and reflexive to look for the source of alarm, or at least to turn your head when you could see everyone else doing so – but his parents wouldn’t understand that. They couldn’t “hear” emotions or thoughts. They would only see several hundred telepaths, clad in school uniforms, turning to look in near-unison, like a school of fish spotting a predator.</p><p>            His parents flinched, and took a step back.</p><p>            <em>Oh!</em> someone near him thought.<em> Those are Andy’s parents!</em></p><p>
  <em>            Normals.</em>
</p><p>            The anomaly having been spotted, the students returned their attention back to the teachers, but the damage had been done.</p><p>            He remembered what Hideo had told him, weeks before. <em>Normals don’t like to be around us. One telepath is safe, maybe two, but not a whole campus. They’re too scared of us.</em></p><p>            Andy wanted to disappear in the crowd, camouflaged into invisibility. He hoped his parents couldn’t see him, but his gut told him that they already had.</p><p>            The teachers read that day’s announcements, but, rooted to the spot in the chill December air, Andy still couldn’t take his eyes off his parents. Was that a wrapped gift in his father’s hands? Was his mother crying?</p><p>            He saw his mother whisper something, and his father nod. He couldn’t make out their thoughts, but he had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. They stood perfectly still until the announcements were over, and then, as the school dispersed, Andy saw his mother wiping away tears. They turned to leave. He watched them walk out the front gates, back to their car, gifts still in hand.</p><p>
  <em>            The Corps is Mother and Father…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>            We are the children of the Corps…</em>
</p><p>            Andy lingered behind in the courtyard, gaze fixed to the gate by which his parents had walked out of his life forever, until Kit and Henry came to take him to breakfast.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Final Reckoning, p. 242 (“One hundred and fifty-eight years ago, the existence of telepaths was known to almost no one. One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, it became common knowledge thanks to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. By the end of that year, eighteen thousand telepaths were dead. No war was declared by any government. They were killed one at a time, they were killed en masse and buried in pits, they were aborted when DNA testing revealed what they were as fetuses.” “Mr. Bester, I’m sure we all know the history.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 31 (“She stared at him. “Vindicated? How can I feel vindicated by the deaths of more than ten thousand people? The massacre Wednesday in Shanxi? The bombing in Utah? The rioting in Chicago - the spacings in Armstrong?””)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> <em>Id.</em> The Chicago Riots took place in 2115, while mandatory telepath registration in the United States (and in other then-EA member states) was passed into law in 2117.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Mandatory registration didn't become universal until the Corps was formed in 2156. See Dark Genesis, p. 119</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 2</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> <em>Id.</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 33-34, 42</p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 118-119, p. 157</p><p><a href="#_ftnref9" id="_ftn9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 119</p><p><a href="#_ftnref10" id="_ftn10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 60. The writing is inconsistent. If, as stated, 30% of telepaths aren’t detected by the test (which appears to be a saliva swab), then the MRA personnel are doing a genetic test and not a screening for telepathic ability, which would be exceptionally rare among first graders anyway. Many more people carry the genetic marker than are actually telepathic. The teacher nonetheless says “Only one in ten thousand tests out as a telepath. I doubt we’ll even find one here today,” confusing the incidence of Corps-level telepathy in the overall population (children + adults) as given in <em>Mind War</em> with the prevalence of the genetic marker, which is much higher.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref11" id="_ftn11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 118-119</p><p><a href="#_ftnref12" id="_ftn12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> Final Reckoning, p. 242 (“They were killed one at a time, they were killed en masse and buried in pits, they were aborted when DNA testing revealed what they were as fetuses.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref13" id="_ftn13" name="_ftn13">[13]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 33 ("The telepathy gene?" "It's not so simple as that. No one has found any gene that seems to control for telepathy. It appears to be like intelligence, an emergent property found in many different genes. But the author of this paper did find a marker.")</p><p><a href="#_ftnref14" id="_ftn14" name="_ftn14">[14]</a> The genetics in canon is <em>really</em> hand-wavey. See Dark Genesis, p. 33-34, and other places where the custom of telepath children taking their mother's surnames is referred to as taking the "mitochondrial" name, e.g. Deadly Relations, p. 215.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref15" id="_ftn15" name="_ftn15">[15]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 266-267. See also Deadly Relations, p. 21 The Corps flagship school in Geneva has a crèche in the hospital quad for care of infants, even though most telepaths don’t enter the Corps until they are older, even those with telepath parents.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref16" id="_ftn16" name="_ftn16">[16]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 49</p><p><a href="#_ftnref17" id="_ftn17" name="_ftn17">[17]</a> Dark Genesis, p. 28</p><p><a href="#_ftnref18" id="_ftn18" name="_ftn18">[18]</a> Final Reckoning, p. 242 (“They were killed one at a time, they were killed en masse and buried in pits, they were aborted when DNA testing revealed what they were as fetuses.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref19" id="_ftn19" name="_ftn19">[19]</a> See Peter Hellman, <span class="u">Heroes: Tales from the Israeli Wars</span>, p. 1</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>February 2263. Chicago.</p><p>            <em>“Tonight we bring you another dramatic story, this time from Chicago, where the Corps rescued a teen from nightmarish conditions. Psi Corps youth workers reported to the house after the boy’s parents withdrew him from school to keep him from joining the Corps, even holding him captive in his own home."</em></p><p>            The screen showed a suburban home, surrounded by police tape.</p><p>
  <em>            “According to authorities, the youth workers were allegedly attacked by the boy’s father, who fired at them from the second storey of the home, through a narrow opening in a tarp designed to obscure line of sight. One youth worker was killed instantly, while the other escaped with injuries and called for help. A Psi Cop and bloodhound unit responded to the scene and took the man and his wife into custody. Warrants were obtained, and authorities searched the home, and discovered financial and other ties to known rogue cells in the area.”</em>
</p><p>            “You’ll never take my boy!” the man in handcuffs shouted into the camera as bloodhounds led him to a waiting police vehicle. “You’ll do nothing but enslave him and fill his mind with propaganda! You’ll turn him into a mindless tool of evil! You’re worse than Nazis! I’ll fight you to my dying breath! Byron lives!”</p><p>            The news returned to the announcer, an attractive young blonde woman wearing a colorblock skirtsuit, black gloves and a shiny psi insignia badge.</p><p>
  <em>            “The fourteen-year-old boy is now safely in Corps custody.”</em>
</p><p>            “Thank God,” said Henry, next to Andy on the lounge floor. “Mundanes are crazy. They hate us when we don’t rescue their kids, but they hate us when we do, too.”</p><p>            “Normals just hate telepaths,” replied Hideo. “It’s not complicated.”</p><p>*****</p><p>            Every week since Andy had arrived at school, another new student arrived, having been noticed on routine screenings or brought in for testing by parents or teachers. Their presence, rather than making life easier for Andy, only made it more complicated. The teachers made sure that every new arrival had a Corps-raised roommate, to force them to acclimate as much as possible, but it only went so far. Rather than learn to blend in, as Andy had, they broke small rules to test the teachers’ limits. They left their beds unmade, arrived to class late, wore their uniforms disheveled, or broke curfew.</p><p>            One night, Andy woke up to go to the bathroom and smelled tobacco smoke. He followed the smell down the hall to the lounge, where he saw three of the new girls standing out on the balcony, with the glass door partly open. He could see that at least one of them was smoking.</p><p>            Where had she got cigarettes?</p><p>            He went back to his room and woke Hideo.</p><p>            “Three of the new girls, they’re out on the balcony. Barbara’s got a cigarette. That’s not allowed, is it?”</p><p>            “The Corps allows adults to smoke,” Hideo said, “but tobacco’s not allowed on campus.” Hideo got out of bed and started to get dressed. “We should tell Teacher Jovanović, and let him handle it.”</p><p>            “But…” Now Andy had his doubts. “If we get them in trouble, they’ll hate us.”</p><p>            “Andy, we all have a responsibility to look after each other here. All telepaths do. The Corps has rules to keep us safe, and smoking isn’t safe. The Corps is Mother and Father.”</p><p>            “But… It’s not a big deal. I never should have woke you.”</p><p>            Hideo shook his head adamantly.</p><p>            “No no, you did the right thing! Get dressed.” He hesitated. “Or at least get your gloves on. You can’t go out and see a teacher like that.”</p><p>            Andy scowled. He hadn’t actually intended to go to see the teachers bare-handed. He knew better. “If we tell a teacher,” he protested, “the girls will hate us.”</p><p>            “So what if they do? They chose to break school rules. What punishment they get is their own fault, not yours or mine.”</p><p>            “You go, not me.”</p><p>            Hideo buttoned up his uniform. “Really? Teacher Jovanović will know you’re the one who saw it, but that you refused to report it to him yourself. Maybe if he were a normal he wouldn’t know… No. He will question you in the morning. He will ask you what is more important to you – the Corps, or the feelings of a few laters you’ve barely even met. I don’t envy you, but it is your choice.”</p><p>            Reluctantly, Andy slipped on his gloves. “But it’s a small thing. It’s not like they tried to kill someone.”</p><p>            “A small rule today, a big rule tomorrow,” Hideo recited. “That’s what we always said back in the cadres. Telepaths hold each other accountable. The Corps isn’t just the teachers, Andy – it’s you, it’s me, it’s all of us together.”</p><p>            Andy accompanied Hideo down the hall to the far end of the floor, and stood quietly as Hideo knocked on the teacher’s door and told him what happened. Teacher Jovanović thanked them both and sent them back to their room.</p><p>            “And now?” Andy asked Hideo.</p><p>            “And now we go back to bed! It’s 1 AM. I’m exhausted!”</p><p>            Hideo went back to sleep with a clear conscience, while Andy sat awake, thinking.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            In the morning, when Andy and Hideo left for class, they found Barbara already standing in the courtyard, on the pedestal of shame, bits of vegetables stuck in her already unruly brown curls. Someone, Andy could see, had used her for target practice.<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a></p><p>            Andy didn’t quite understand why the Corps made disobedient students stand as “statues” in the courtyard, but there were still many things he didn’t understand.</p><p>            Teacher Jovanović stood several paces off, watching her very carefully.</p><p>            “My name is Barbara Cook!” she shouted toward her classmates as they walked by. “I stand here today because I broke curfew with two of my friends, Halilah Qureshi and Nicole Sartorio! It was all my idea! I also broke school rules by smoking on campus! I stand here as a lesson to my classmates never to break school rules!”<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a></p><p>            She was shooting daggers at Andy and Hideo with her eyes.</p><p>            Andy turned to his roommate. “She’d jump off that platform and strangle me if a teacher wasn’t standing right there,” he whispered.</p><p>            “Let it go. It’s her own fault she’s up there. She’ll learn her lesson.”</p><p>            “But she hates me now.”</p><p>            “Andy, the Corps saved her life. Tobacco can kill you!”</p><p>            “Shut up!” Barbara yelled at Hideo. “I heard you, you little snot! I don’t need your stupid health lesson!”</p><p>            The teacher gave her an additional two hours on the pedestal for her outburst.</p><p>            But Barbara’s behavior didn’t improve. That Saturday evening, the Minor Academy held its weekly vid night, but Barbara just complained.</p><p>            “All the vids are the same, and they’re all stupid,” she whined. “I can tell you the plot right now – some kid from a normal family shows up at school, and breaks the rules. Something bad happens to him, and all the Corps-raised telepaths teach that kid how great life in the Corps is. The end! Meanwhile I still have three chapters to read for English class, but I have to see this stupid vid instead.”</p><p>            She and her friends sat in the back row and made rude comments during the film, laughing at everything on screen. Barbara was an unusually strong telepath, and she ‘cast images of the characters naked, or wearing silly hats, or in tutus.</p><p>            Andy agreed the film was pretty shallow, but he didn’t like Barbara’s behavior either. There were kids who wanted to see the film, and she was ruining it for them in order to have a laugh with her friends.</p><p>            “You might learn something if you watched the vid instead of mocking it,” Hideo said, angry.</p><p>            “Barbara’s disrupting the vid!” someone called. “Teacher Huetson!”</p><p>            The old man pulled Barbara and her friends out in the hall for a “talk.” Andy sighed.</p><p>*****</p><p>            Andy had expected to feel less alone as other students from normal homes arrived on campus, but he only felt more confused and out of place. He didn’t entirely fit in with the Corps-raised telepaths, who had all known each other since preschool, but he didn’t fit in with the newcomers either, who quickly formed their own clique, even as they accused the Corps-raised telepaths of being cliquish.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a></p><p>            “You were raised by normals?” a new girl named Gabrielle asked him the next day at lunch, coming up to his table where he sat with his Corps-raised friends.</p><p>            “Yeah, why?”</p><p>            “You’re the snitch! They told me you were from a normal home but I didn’t believe it.”</p><p>            He rolled his eyes. “What’s it to you who my parents are?”</p><p>            “Because you’re supposed to be one of us. You’re not supposed to be sitting with <span class="u">them</span>.”</p><p>            “Who said so?”</p><p>            “Barbara.”</p><p>            “Barbara? She hates me!”</p><p>            “She hates you because she hates the Corps. Since the day she got here she thought you were cute. She made up her mind that you were hers and told everyone hands off, she was gonna get you. But then you had to start in with all that Corps crap, so now she hates you. Get it?”</p><p>            He didn’t. He blinked awkwardly as Gabrielle walked back to her table. None of his Corps-raised friends had been paying attention, as if Gabrielle had been completely invisible.</p><p>            “Who do you think will win the Patel Prize this year?” Hideo was asking the others.</p><p>            “The what?”</p><p>            “You’ve never heard of Burian Patel?”</p><p>            Andy shook his head.</p><p>            “Haven’t you ever seen the statue out in our courtyard?”</p><p>            This statue was real, made of solid bronze. Andy had passed it many times, but never stopped to see who it had been dedicated to. He’d never cared.</p><p>            “Burian Patel was a bloodhound who gave his life in the Black Fox raid back in ’22.<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> He graduated from this school. We honor his sacrifice every year on Birthday with a prize to one student who best exemplifies the values of the Corps.”</p><p>            “The students vote?” Andy was reminded of popularity contests in school, and of student elections. If Barbara and her clique got equal votes, he’d never win <span class="u">anything</span>. Her clique of laters grew by the week.</p><p>            Hideo gave him a strange look. “Of course not,” he answered, “the award comes from the Corps, like all awards do.”</p><p>            “Except for commendations from the Senate,” Deepa corrected.<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a></p><p>            “We’re just kids, Deepa, not Psi Cops!”</p><p>            “I’m just being technical.”</p><p>            “You’re just being <span class="u">pedantic</span>.”</p><p>            “Who won this Patel Prize last year?” Andy asked.</p><p>            Hideo pointed across the dining hall at an older student with nut brown skin and black wavy hair. “Jermaine leRoy, Deepa’s heartthrob.”</p><p>            “He is not!” she shouted, a little too loud.</p><p>            Hideo laughed. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Deepa. He’s a P8, with all top grades, and he’s the best in his class at both fencing and chess. If I were into boys, I’d be in love with him, too!”</p><p>            “I kinda like boys sometimes,” said Henry, the freckle-faced kid who’d asked Andy about his sexual orientation on his first day at school. Andy had sarcastically told him that he was into Narn. “Jermaine’s hot.”</p><p>            “Stop it, both of you!” shouted Deepa.</p><p>            Andy could feel her flush.</p><p>            Hideo shook his head, jealous.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Other students torment the "statue of the day" in various ways - they dress them up in costumes, taunt them, and at one point, students put peanut butter in Bester's hair. Gregory Keyes, Deadly Relations, p. 81-85, 125. The humiliation is part of the punishment, but once the "statue time" is over, students are fully accepted back into the community.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> <em>Id.</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 125</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Deadly Relations, p. 162-167 (the raid mentions bloodhounds present, and some killed)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> See Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 243 (“I have the commendations to prove it, a drawerful.”). See also, Dark Genesis, p. 90 (Desa Alexander, for her work as an agent of the Metasensory Regulatory Authority, awarded the Gold Shield and the Crossed Arrow by the EA Senate for “outstanding service to the Earth Alliance and for Bravery, Integrity and Honor”).</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Andy wasn’t too surprised when the boy from the Corps news broadcast showed up at school. Most telepath teens in the greater Chicago area – maybe from even further away – ended up at the same school.</p><p>            Unsuspecting, Barbara had tried to reach out to him at breakfast on his first day. Mason had been sitting all alone in the corner of the cafeteria, on the floor, keeping as much distance between himself and the others as possible.</p><p>            Andy and a few others came along to watch. New arrivals always provided fodder for some gossip, and this kid was strange.</p><p>            “Hey,” she said. “I’m Barbara.”</p><p>            “Don’t touch me, you filthy pslut,” he snapped at her, and made the sign of the cross in her face.</p><p>            “What did you just call me?”</p><p>            It was fitting justice, Andy mused darkly, that for all she hated the Corps, someone raised in the Corps had to explain the slur to her.</p><p>            “I don’t think you get it,” Barbara said, angry. “I’m from a normal family, like you. I just got here a few weeks ago. I hate this place, and I hate the Corps. We can’t do shit here: no smoking, no drinking, everybody’s all goodie goodie. You break the rules, they kick your ass. You don’t have to play tough guy with me, I’m on your side.”</p><p>            He spat at her. “Good cop, bad cop. I know all your tricks. My dad’s with the Resistance. Fuck you all. You’re all in on it.”</p><p>            “In on what?”</p><p>            “The conspiracy. You don’t hate the Corps, this is all an act. You claim to hate the Corps, do you? Then why haven’t you run away? Why haven’t you picked up a weapon and fought back?”</p><p>            “Fought who?”</p><p>            “You know, killed a teacher.”</p><p>            Barbara’s jaw fell open in horror. “<span class="u">Killed a teacher</span>?”</p><p>            Andy and his friends backed up a step. This new student wasn’t merely weird – he was <span class="u">dangerous</span><em>.</em></p><p>            “If you really hated the Corps,” Mason was saying, “you’d do it. You’re a fake, and you’re a coward. You’re all part of the plot to get to me. I know what you’re all up to. I know all your tactics. The Corps’ brainwashed every one of you, but they’re never going to get me.”</p><p>            He stood and tried to leave the cafeteria, but a teacher made him stay, so he went to the opposite corner of the hall and sat on the floor there instead.</p><p>            “Holy shit,” said Barbara. “Where’d they pick up that sick puppy?” She turned to Andy. “Or are the teachers playing mind games with me so I won’t break curfew again?”</p><p>            Andy shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He told her about the segment he’d seen on the news the week before. “He tried to commit suicide so he wouldn’t be sent here. His dad killed a Corps youth worker. Shot her in the chest as she approached the house.”</p><p>            Barbara stood speechless for a few moments, looking across the crowded cafeteria in the direction Mason had gone. “Sure, this place sucks, but… <span class="u">kill a teacher</span>?”</p><p>*****</p><p>            No one tried to talk to Mason for days. For his safety (or the safety of the other students), the teachers made him sleep in the infirmary where staff would be awake to watch him around the clock. He went to class, but sat in the back and refused to participate. At sports, he stood on the sidelines. If anyone tried to talk to him, even just to get him to eat, he carried on about his dad, the Resistance, and violence. He carved “Remember Byron” into one of the cafeteria trays with a knife, and the teachers decided he would only be given plastic cutlery from then on. Andy remembered having heard on the news, before he'd entered the Corps, something about a rogue telepath named Byron Gordon who’d set himself on fire. There was little direct talk of the incident on Corps news programs, but the normal media had covered the incident extensively the summer before. He wondered if Mason’s behavior was related. The teachers certainly took it very seriously.</p><p>            After several weeks of enduring Mason’s anti-social behavior, even the most determined among the Corps-raised telepaths gave up. Rumors spread around campus that he was seeing mental health professionals several times a week, but putting up mental blocks and refusing to talk. He wouldn’t do homework or take exams – when he wrote anything at all, it was along the lines of “Byron Still Lives” and “you’re all dead.”</p><p>            “What does he think this place is?” asked Barbara. “It’s a strict-ass boarding school, not <span class="u">1984</span>. He doesn’t want any friends? To hell with him.”</p><p>            From what Andy could tell, the teachers, too, were somewhat at a loss what to do. Mason was stubborn in a way they were unfamiliar with. They never discussed him with the other students, but Andy and the others could feel their thoughts. Should he be moved to a different school? Where?</p><p>            And his defiance echoed eerily with the news reports. Every several days, there was news of more unrest in the outside world, with rogue cells forming in city after city, apparently despite the best efforts of the Corps and local police departments.</p><p>            “Why can’t they stop them?!” Henry shouted at the screen. “There can’t be too many of these rogues around, and if they were once in the Corps, then we know who they are. We know everything about them.”</p><p>            <em>“Director York met again today with the Senate oversight committee to discuss the recent increase in rogue activity.</em>”</p><p>            An old, bald man – gloveless – stood in front of a podium and urged patience and restraint. Rogue telepaths, he insisted, posed no substantial threat. The Corps would have the problem wrapped up soon. There was, he reassured the public, no reason to worry.</p><p>            Andy looked around the lounge, especially at his Corps-raised friends. They squirmed. Something was wrong, but they couldn’t point to it.</p><p>            “He’s so full of shit,” said Barbara flatly.</p><p>            “Barbara! That’s the Director! Do you know who he is?!”</p><p>            Tempers flared, the Corps-raised telepaths zealously jumped to the defense of the director, and soon everyone was shouting. Andy stepped in to break up the fight, but it was several minutes before anyone could be quiet enough to listen to each other.</p><p>            “I’ve been out in the world,” Barbara was saying. “They don’t show you ISN here, they only show you the Corps news. You don’t see what’s going on. There are attacks, or at least attempts, every couple weeks. You guys wanna know what normals think? I’ll tell you – they’re more scared of telepaths now than they’ve been since 2156, when the Centauri landed. They’re not rioting in the streets and tossing us out windows, but they’re scared, and this ‘Director’ of yours is just giving speeches and not doing shit about the problem.”</p><p>            Henry was shaking his head. “But it shouldn’t matter. Whatever the Director says, Psi Cops know how to track down rogues, that’s what they do. That’s what they’ve always done. Why is this happening?”</p><p>            “I told you, because the Director…”</p><p>            “He what, doesn’t want the Corps to stop them?”</p><p>            The question hung in the air, too unthinkable to consider.</p><p>            “If the Corps doesn’t stop it,” Henry continued, “it’s just going to get worse.”</p><p>            The teens looked at each other in silence, as the news droned on about a different story. No one knew what to do.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            As spring approached, Andy’s school began to prepare for the April 12<sup>th</sup> Birthday festivities, marking the day the Corps was founded,<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> the collective “birthday” shared by all telepaths. Though students from normal homes personally celebrated many holidays,<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> Birthday was the only campus-wide party of the year.<a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a></p><p>            Many school alumni, Andy learned, would be returning for the day’s events, and it was traditional for students to put on short plays,<a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a> each with a moral about life in the Corps: don’t be lazy, don’t be selfish, help others, and the like.<a href="#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a></p><p>            Kit asked Andy to take the lead role in their play.</p><p>            “No no, you should get the lead, Kit. I can’t act.”</p><p>            “Yes you can, we’ll help you,” said Andy’s friend Guy. “You’re new here. You should have the most important part.”</p><p>            “But I can’t remember lines.”</p><p>            “If you forget, we’ll ‘cast them to you.”</p><p>            Andy’s character, “The Selfish Spider,” had no costume – he had to learn how to ‘cast the illusion of looking like a giant spider.<a href="#_ftn6" id="_ftnref6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> It was hard to do for more than a few moments at a time, but got easier with practice.<a href="#_ftn7" id="_ftnref7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a> Andy and his classmates spent an hour a day writing their play, and rehearsing.</p><p>            “I hate this,” said Barbara one day after classes, as the students split up into their small groups. “All these stupid little plays with stupid little morals.”</p><p>            “It’s about building community,” Andy tried to explain. “They’re like fables, you know, like Aesop, except we get to write our own.”</p><p>            “Our own?!” She laughed at him. “We have to say what they want. Then they get to show us off like good little parrots at the reunion. Well, they can make me say the lines, but they can’t make me believe it.”</p><p>            “It’s not all that bad, Barbara. You always make everything such a big deal. Can’t you ever relax?”</p><p>            “Are you trying for the Patel Prize?” she snapped. “You want to be the good kid on one of those vids who shows the newcomer how wonderful life in the Corps is?”</p><p>            “It’s just… forget it.” He went to find his friends and work on the play. There was no point in arguing with Barbara – she always looked for the worst in everything, and made a big fuss about it. Maybe the plays were silly, but he got to have fun with his friends. Why did she always have to try to ruin everything?</p><p>            He’d assumed that since he’d arrived first, the newer students would appreciate his help in learning how to fit in at school. Or maybe he was trying to repay the kindness that had been shown to him when he was new, and his parents abandoned him. The Corps’ raised students could have snubbed him, as his classmates back home had always done to new children who moved to town. But they hadn’t – his telepath classmates had always included him, even when he felt out of place, and sad about his family.</p><p>            No one had ever directly asked him to try to help acclimate the new students – they hadn’t had to. He’d taken it on himself. He thought that as someone raised in the normal world, the new kids would trust him more than they would the others. Or at least, that they should.</p><p>            He tried to put it out of his mind. Barbara was just looking for a fight. Maybe that was her problem – she was <span class="u">always</span> looking for a fight, somewhere.</p><p>*****</p><p>            On Birthday, the school auditorium was filled to capacity both with familiar faces and alumni of all ages. Andy stood offstage as Deepa introduced the play.</p><p>            “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a village, and every year all the animals would come together and make a sacrifice, because if they didn’t, the rain wouldn’t fall and the crops wouldn’t grow. Squirrel brought a great big bag of acorns…”</p><p>            Kit came onstage, miming a heavy sack over his back, and ‘casting himself to look like a giant squirrel. He dropped the bag down into a pit, which was really a pile of pillows.</p><p>            “And the Queen Bee brought all her honey…”</p><p>            Larissa hoped into stage, flapping her arms like they were wings. She didn’t look very bee-like, but then again, she was only a P5. Kit was still on stage – he tried to give her yellow and black stripes, at least.</p><p>            “The Chicken brought lots and lots of eggs…”</p><p>            One by one his classmates made their “sacrifices.” Finally it was Andy’s turn. He scrambled onstage, in front of hundreds of strangers, and tried his very best to look large and creepy.</p><p>            “But the selfish spider,” said Deepa, “he thought only of himself.”</p><p>            “I won’t give you my precious silk!” Andy said, “it’s mine! I don’t care what happens to the village.”</p><p>            All the other “animals” gasped.</p><p>            “But Spider,” said the Chicken, “if you don’t give us your silk, the rain won’t fall and the crops won’t grow!”</p><p>            “I don’t care.”</p><p>            “But Spider,” said the Cow, “if you don’t give us your silk, everyone will die of hunger!”</p><p>            “I don’t care! All my silk is mine, mine mine!” Andy ran off-stage.</p><p>            “All the animals were very scared,” said Deepa. “They didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, the selfish spider left the village and tried to make it on his own, all by himself, without the other animals. He ran away and traveled very far, till he came to a cottage.”</p><p>            The other students left the stage. Only Deepa and Andy remained. “I have plenty of silk,” Andy said, building a “web” in the corner. “I don’t need anybody else.”</p><p>            “First, he hid in the house of an old lady,” said Deepa. “He built a really big web in her attic. But the old lady saw him one day, and knocked down his web and shooed him out!”</p><p>            Chelsea, playing the old woman, chased him around the stage with a “broom.” <em>Shoo, spider, shoo!</em> she ‘cast. “You abandoned your village, you abandoned your family! Get out of my house!”</p><p>            Andy ran off stage, waited for Chelsea to leave, and then came back and built another web.</p><p>            “I have plenty of silk,” he said again. “I don’t need her, I’ll build another web.”</p><p>            “This time he hid in the house of an old man,” said Deepa. “He built a really big web in the man’s shed. But one day he too saw the selfish spider, and shooed him out!”</p><p>            “Go away, spider!” shouted Henry, chasing Andy around the stage and trying to step on him. “I’ll stomp you to bits! I hate spiders!”</p><p>            “Everywhere the spider went,” Deepa said, “he built a new web, but everywhere he went, he was chased out. Finally he had nowhere to go other than back to his village.”</p><p>            All the other “animals” came back on stage, and Andy sheepishly joined them.</p><p>            “We’re starving,” said Chicken. “The rain won’t fall and the crops won’t grow. Look what you have done to us! Will you finally give us your silk?”</p><p>            “I would,” said Andy, “but I have no more silk left. I thought only of myself for a very long time, and I used up all my silk. I have nothing more to give you.”</p><p>            All the other “animals” sat down and “cried.”</p><p>            “We’re doomed,” they said, “we’re going to starve. There will be no rain, and there will be no crops!”</p><p>            All the animals flailed about and “cried” very dramatically.</p><p>            Deepa spoke up. “But the selfish spider,” she said, “he’d learned the error of his ways, and he’d learned not to be selfish any longer. So he jumped in the pit himself, with all the acorns and the honey and eggs and the milk…”</p><p>            Andy threw himself into the pile of pillows. Off stage, one of his classmates sounded a big “boom.”</p><p>            “…And because of the spider’s sacrifice, the heavens opened up and the rains fell again. And from then on, everyone taught their children to learn from the spider’s example and never to be selfish. The Corps is Mother and Father and everyone must make sacrifices so our family may stay healthy and strong. Telepaths depend on each other. The end!”<a href="#_ftn8" id="_ftnref8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a></p><p>            The audience cheered. Andy bowed with his classmates and, as he felt the waves of appreciation from all around him, and for the first time, he felt like he was truly part of something larger than himself.</p><p>            He wished his parents and sister had been there to watch. He wished they could see him now, but deep inside, he knew they would never understand.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> See <em>The Illusion of Truth</em> for the day the Corps was founded (April 12<sup>th</sup>, 2161). However, Gregory Keyes, Dark Genesis, p. 118 places the formation of the Corps in April 2156. This is the date I go with here. (The date of Birthday is never explicitly given in canon, but we know that it is warm weather in Geneva (Deadly Relations, p. 17-21), and I can’t think of a more logical date the Corps would choose for the collective Birthday holiday.)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Telepaths have individual religions (see for example Crusade, <em>The Needs of Earth</em>, wherein at the end Matheson talks about his Catholic faith), and there is nothing given in canon to suggest that the Corps prevents students from privately practicing their respective religions.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> Birthday is a campus-wide celebration. See Deadly Relations, p. 17-20. No other holidays are mentioned in canon as celebrated in the Corps.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> For a canon example of children in Psi Corps putting on a play for Birthday, see Deadly Relations, p. 18-19.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref5" id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> See Deadly Relations, p. 18-19. (The class play has a moral lesson against laziness, and is about “[t]he sin of standing apart from the village. The sin of selfishness.”)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref6" id="_ftn6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> <em>Id.</em> (no costumes, children ‘cast the illusion of costumes)</p><p><a href="#_ftnref7" id="_ftn7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> In Deadly Relations, on p. 10, Bester doesn’t have much trouble doing this as a child, but he is a high P12, a child prodigy. In <em>Visitors from Down the Street</em> (Crusade), Matheson, a P6, has difficulty holding such an illusion for more than a few moments, and suffers considerable strain, though he is also doing this to an alien mind (in a first contact scenario), so the alien’s mind is unfamiliar.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref8" id="_ftn8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> School plays always have both pro-social and pro-Corps morals. See Deadly Relations, p. 18-19.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Andy sipped some punch and looked out over the auditorium, filled with telepaths of all ages and ethnicities. He even spotted a few Psi Cops in the audience. Everyone looked so relaxed, so <span class="u">happy</span><em>.</em></p><p>            He’d never seen anything like it, a community so tight, so interconnected. He thought of the student art projects he’d seen upon his arrival. <em>I’m part of this now</em>, he thought. <em>Some day, this will be me. These will be my people.</em></p><p>            He was still quietly watching the crowd when Henry ran up to him, agitated.</p><p>            “Andy, Barbara’s gone. Her group’s supposed to be up next but she’s run off!”</p><p>            A group of older students took the stage.</p><p>            He ground his teeth. Damn that Barbara, did she always have to cause trouble, even on Birthday? Couldn’t she not break the rules, just once?</p><p>            “She can’t have gotten too far,” Andy replied with annoyance. “Let’s find her.” They searched the halls of the auditorium building. “She told me she thinks the plays are stupid, and she doesn’t want to participate.”</p><p>            “That’s not right! This is a group play – it’s not all about her. I don’t understand some of these laters. Why does she hate the Corps?”</p><p>            Andy didn’t have an answer. They looked in all the small classrooms upstairs, but there was no sign of Barbara.</p><p>            “Now, Mason,” Henry was saying, “I understand why he hates the Corps. His parents were rogue sympathizers! There’s a rumor they used to hide telepaths in their basement – you know, rogues running away from the Corps. Can you <span class="u">imagine</span>?”</p><p>            They walked back downstairs, and on a whim, decided to search the basement. No Barbara.</p><p>            “So of course he talks about blowing people up and destroying the Corps,” Henry was saying, “because that’s what rogues talk about. I’m glad he’s in the Corps now. He can learn what we’re really all about. And finally someone can raise him right.”</p><p>            “He talks about blowing people up?”</p><p>            “Yeah, but it’s nonsense,” said Henry. “He acts like he’s in a vid, talks about rescuing us from slavery, about killing thousands, about bombs. The teachers don’t even let him eat with metal cutlery, for crying out loud. How would he ever get parts for a bomb?”</p><p>            The boys decided to search outside, and finally found Barbara sitting under the statue of Burian Patel, sulking.</p><p>            “Your group’s waiting for you,” Henry told her, annoyed. “You’re holding everyone up.”</p><p>            “I won’t do it. I won’t be your parrot and tell everyone the Corps is my mother and father. To hell with all of you and your stupid birthday party.”</p><p>            “You’re being very selfish,” Henry chided. “Everything isn’t always about <span class="u">you</span>, what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. If you’d been listening to the plays, you would know that.”</p><p>            “You go take my part if you love the plays so much. I don’t care, leave me alone.” She turned to Andy. “And you, you can go rat on me again like when you caught me smoking. What can they do, make me stand up and recite more lines? I’m a ‘bad girl,’ I know. I don’t care anymore.”</p><p>            “Say…” said Andy, struck with a sudden thought. “Where did you get those cigarettes, anyway? The teachers don’t allow tobacco on campus. You couldn’t have brought them with you – they go through your luggage.”</p><p>            “Nah, a friend of mine from middle school sent them, wrapped up in a letter. The teachers didn’t check.”</p><p>            The three students looked at each other in horror.</p><p>
  <em>-how would he get components for a bomb-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-would he really want to blow up the school-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-this is a reunion, everyone is here now-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-if he was going to pick a day-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-the teachers didn’t check my mail-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-has anyone been scanning him?-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-where is he? has anyone been watching him?-</em>
</p><p>            Their thoughts tumbled together in a frantic panic. Barbara was on her feet.</p><p>            “We have to find Mason!”</p><p>            “No no,” said Henry, “we have to tell the teachers!” He turned and ran back to the building.</p><p>            Barbara closed her eyes and concentrated very hard. A few moments later, she looked over at Andy.</p><p>            “How strong are you?”</p><p>            “You mean telepathically?”</p><p>            “Yeah, what’s your rating?”</p><p>            “Six.”</p><p>            “That might be enough. I can’t do it alone.” She pulled off her gloves and told him to do the same.</p><p>            Andy looked at her in horror. “You can’t take off your gloves in public! Are you <span class="u">insane</span>?! If you thought what they did to you for smoking was bad-”</p><p>            “Do it! We can find Mason, I saw this in a vid, this is what bloodhounds do when they’re searching for rogues. Or do you want that son of a bitch to blow up the school?”</p><p>            “What do <span class="u">you</span> of all people know about what bloodhounds do?!”</p><p>            He realized suddenly that he’d been underestimating her all along – for all she’d been pretending not to care, she’d actually been paying very close attention in other ways. And she had to be a very strong telepath – he remembered how easily she’d ‘cast those silly images at vid time. The whole class had seen them. He hadn’t thought much of it, until having to work so hard to ‘cast his spider “costume” had put things in perspective. How strong was she, anyway?</p><p>            Andy glanced around – everyone was inside. No one would see him take off his gloves unless there were cameras on the rooftops.</p><p>            Oh, to hell with it.</p><p>            “OK,” he said, removing his gloves, “but you have to promise not to talk about this. And… this doesn’t mean anything, you know, about us.”</p><p>            “I swear, just do it.”</p><p>            She grabbed his palm, and a jolt went through his body.</p><p>
  <em>            Now do you remember what his mind felt like? Focus on that.</em>
</p><p>            Andy didn’t, really – he’d stayed away from Mason like all the other students had. He let Barbara do the work of looking for Mason, using the physical connection with him to magnify the reach of her senses.<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a></p><p>            “Got him… he’s in a storage closet downstairs, and he’s trying to build some kind of device. What the fuck is he doing down there?”</p><p>            She and Andy put their gloves on and ran back. A small crowd was standing in the foyer, among them a Psi Cop. Henry had already warned the adults – like a single organism, all eyes turned to the two students.</p><p>            Andy and Barbara didn’t have to explain what they knew. Their thoughts said it all, and in a moment they were pushing their way through the crowd in the auditorium, adults at their heels.</p><p><em>            This way</em>, someone ‘cast. <em>I know that closet.</em></p><p>            They ran downstairs, back through the same corridors that less than an hour before, Andy and Henry had wandered, searching for Barbara. When they reached the door, Andy tried the handle, but it was locked.</p><p>            POUND POUND POUND.</p><p>            “This is Teacher Huetson! Open this door immediately!”</p><p>            “Stand back.”</p><p>            The Psi Cop unholstered her PPG and shot the door handle clean off.</p><p>            The small, windowless room was cluttered with cleaning supplies, crates and brown cardboard boxes. Mason sat on the floor in the center of the room, barehanded, a hand-made device in front of him.</p><p>            “You’re too late,” he said, with a satisfied grin. “You’re all dead.”</p><p>            What happened next was a blur. Barbara screamed and tackled him to the floor, while the adults rushed into the room and shoved Andy back out into the hallway.</p><p><em>            RUN!</em> someone screamed into his mind, and his legs obeyed the command before the rest of him had a chance to even register it. He was halfway across the courtyard before he regained control of his body.</p><p>            People were pouring outside, confused.</p><p>            “Keep moving, keep moving,” one of the Psi Cops was saying, as he waved his arms to direct people away from the building. “This is not a drill.”</p><p>            Some adults gathered around Andy. He must have been blooping like mad.</p><p>            “Oh my God,” said one woman in the thirties, “I saw that news story. The same boy? He tried to build a bomb?!” Her gloved fingers flew to her open mouth.</p><p>            “How did he manage to build a bomb here,” asked a man, “in a community of telepaths?”</p><p>            She pointed to Andy. “He doesn’t know the bomb was functional, Mark, he just knows the boy was trying.”</p><p>            “But how did he do it here?”</p><p>            “His parents were rogue sympathizers,” Andy said, catching his breath. “They must have taught him how to circumvent school security.”</p><p>            “Someone needs to call the director this instant,” an older man was saying. “This rogue business has gone far enough. Principal Machesky should fly to Geneva tonight. They’re not just attacking our offices – now they’re attacking our children.”</p><p>            “I’ll tell you how he did it,” said another man. “School security expects the usual. Fights, kids trying to run away, maybe on rare occasion even parents breaking in to ‘rescue’ their children. Not bombs on Birthday! What is the world coming to?!”</p><p>            Andy watched adults carry the unconscious body of Mason out of the building, on stretcher, and bring him to a waiting Psi Corps vehicle.</p><p>            “Mindblasted,” a Psi Cop said. “I hope they scan his guts out, like they should have done before they let him in here. I don’t understand – in my day, a kid like that wouldn’t be here.<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> I know Karen Machesky very well, but I don’t know why she would let someone so dangerous into this school.”</p><p>            Andy remembered what Barbara had said about the director. Something was very wrong. The Corps wouldn’t have let Mason into the school knowing he was dangerous, right?</p><p>            Andy heard commotion by the front gates and turned to look – the media had arrived. The campus was a bubble, but it was still in the middle of Chicago.</p><p>            Normals. There were normals on campus. He hadn’t seen bare hands in months. For some reason he didn’t understand, the sight scared him. Normals – and their bare hands – didn’t belong inside the gates.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> <em>A Race Through Dark Places</em></p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Inference. Someone judged to be a danger to the school community would not be allowed to attend a Psi Corps school. Deadly Relations, p. 44 describes a dangerous teenage criminal with a long rap sheet who, when he entered the Corps, was immediately transferred to a reeducation camp. In contrast, see Gregory Keyes, Final Reckoning, p. 3-4, wherein a twelve-year-old telepath who killed a normal (possibly in self-defense) was granted absolution and a new life in the Corps.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            It was several hours before campus settled down again. Both the normal and the Corps media wanted to cover the story and record interviews, but the teachers did all the talking and forbade the students from speaking on camera.</p><p>            Andy’s friends waited in the auditorium, eating the snacks that had been abandoned in the evacuation. Barbara, they heard, was still being debriefed by the authorities.</p><p>            “Can you believe it?” Deepa was saying, her legs swinging from the edge of the stage. “It’s like the vids. A rogue telepath gets into the school and builds a bomb on Birthday.”</p><p>            “And then a later jumps on it!” said Henry. “They have to make a vid about this. This is the most exciting day <span class="u">ever</span>.”</p><p>            When the whole community finally reconvened, Principal Machesky led an utterly bewildered Barbara up on stage, and pinned a medal to her chest.</p><p>            The grey-haired woman gave a small laugh, “This is the most unusual Birthday I’ve ever had,” she began, “but these are unusual times. Barbara Cook, I am proud to award you with this year’s Patel Prize.”</p><p>            Barbara stood speechless.</p><p>            “As most of you have probably already heard, Ms. Cook is the student who so bravely tracked down our attacker, and then tackled him to keep him from exploding the device in his possession. Thankfully, he wasn’t quite as close to building a functional explosive as he thought,” and the room let out a collective sigh of relief, “but in the moment, none of us had a way to know that. Ms. Cook, yours was the kind of bravery and self-sacrifice that could have saved hundreds of lives.”</p><p>            The community gave her a standing ovation. She stared at them blankly.</p><p>            “Ms. Cook, I know you haven’t been a model student here, and so I’m sure you’re surprised to be up here with me. But the Patel Prize isn’t to honor the student who always obeys curfew. I knew Burian Patel. He was a young man who wanted nothing more than to protect his people, and that’s exactly how he lived, and died – fighting terrorists who would murder us in cold blood. Yes, we take rules seriously at this school, but that’s to build discipline, to build character and a healthy respect for authority. But at its essence, life in the Corps isn’t about the little things, but about family, about sacrifice, about what matters most. We each know in our hearts that what is best for the Corps outweighs any of our individual wants or desires, even our lives. And through your actions today, Ms. Cook, through your selfless sacrifice, you have demonstrated those values better than most of us ever have the chance to.”</p><p>            Andy thought about that morning. To him, he had just been playing a part, the Selfish Spider that learned his lesson and threw himself into the pit. Barbara had actually gone and done it. She could have been blown to bits, throwing herself on that homemade bomb.</p><p>            He looked at Barbara, still speechless on the stage. It would take a while to sink in. She was a hero now.</p><p>            “Ms. Cook, I know it’s not often that the Corps accepts women to the bloodhound units, because it’s such a physically demanding job,<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> but what you’ve shown here today, in your initiative and ingenuity to find our attacker, your leadership, your telepathic skill in tracking him… still untrained, yet! – and in your fearless rush into danger… well, that’s not easy to come by. Discipline can be learned. If you would like to make a career in the bloodhound units, you whole-heartedly have my endorsement.”</p><p>            More cheers went up from the audience. Jermaine leRoy climbed up on stage and shook Barbara’s hand. All the teachers followed.</p><p>            “Go Barbara!” shouted Hideo.</p><p>            As soon as she could get away, she ran out of the auditorium and back to the dorms. No one followed.</p><p>            “Well, she did it,” said Henry. “Just like in the vids. She complained and complained, and then saved the day and learned what life in the Corps is all about. I never thought I’d see it happen for real.”</p><p>            “And when they make a vid about this,” said Kit, “we can tell the kids that this is how it really happened.”</p><p>*****</p><p>            It took Barbara several weeks to begin to adjust to her new status as a hero. Even though her face had not appeared on the news, her name had, and she received hundreds of (screened) letters from telepath youth all over Earth Alliance space, thanking her for her sacrifice and loyalty. Several teachers in other Corps schools also wrote to say that they were redesigning their lessons on sacrifice because of her.</p><p>            “Fictional vids can be powerful, but there is nothing as inspirational as a true story,” one teacher wrote. “My students are your age, so yours is a story they can relate to.”</p><p>            Barbara might have been confused, but the other students on campus were less so. The collective experience of surviving a bomb threat had brought everyone together in new ways, and no longer did laters and Corps-raised telepaths sit at separate tables in the cafeteria. Barbara may have wanted to go back to her clique, but they’d moved on without her.</p><p>            “Don’t be stupid, Barbara,” Andy overheard Gabrielle say one day. “Why should we sit at separate tables? Rogues don’t care who our parents are, they want to kill us all, just because we’re here.”</p><p>            Andy wrote home and told his parents about the new security measures the school was implementing, including first and foremost a new policy of opening all student mail and packages. His letters from home, which, though rare, had been lengthy and full of personal detail, suddenly became short and factual. His parents weren’t rogue sympathizers by a long shot, Andy knew, but they didn’t trust the Corps, and they never would. If there had ever been a chance that they would visit him again, that dream had gone up in a puff of smoke.</p><p>            Something had changed on campus since Birthday, however, and Andy had changed with it. This time, their rejection didn’t sting quite as much as it once had.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> <em>Strange Relations</em>. The books either don’t give a gender, or describe bloodhounds as male. Dark Genesis, p. 131 gives the gender of four bloodhounds (male); p. 164 does not give a gender; p. 180-182 does not give a gender, p. 264-265 gives the gender of one bloodhound (male). In Deadly Relations, the women on p. 8 are explicitly described as not Psi Cops or bloodhounds (Bester concludes they must be business telepaths based on how they are dressed); p. 101-104 does not give the gender; p. 164 gives the gender of just one of the bloodhounds (male); p. 205 does not give the gender; p. 207 gives the gender of Department Sigma’s bloodhounds (male).</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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